Karin Breitman

Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood actress in the 1940s and 1950s, and she was considered "the most beautiful woman in the world" during her time. She began her acting career in Austria and became notorious for being the first woman to simulate an orgasm on screen in 1933. It was during this time that she also got married to Friedrich Mandl, a Vienna-based arms dealer with ties to Mussolini and later Hitler. The marriage did not last long. In her own words, she wrote, "I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife... He was the absolute monarch in his marriage... I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded and imprisoned, having no mind, no life of its own." According to her autobiography, she disguised herself as one of the maids and managed to flee to Paris. Others say she convinced her husband to wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party and then disappeared afterwards. She eventually booked a liner to New York, where she met the head of MGM, who was impressed enough to offer her a $500-a-week contract to work as an actress. In 1938, she arrived in Hollywood and went on to star in several movies, working with the likes of Clark Gable and James Stewart. Beyond her acting career, Lamarr was also co-patented spread-spectrum technology during World War II to prevent the Nazis from jamming navy torpedoes. However, her invention was rejected and wouldn't be implemented until the Cold War in 1962. The technology would eventually be used in developing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.