Actress and inventor. She was an Austrian-born 20th-century American actress. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, the daughter of a prominent Jewish Viennese banker, she gained stardom as a teen for running in the nude through the woods in the 1933 award-winning Czech film "Ecstasy." She married a wealthy arms manufacturer, Fritz Mandl, who was 13 years her senior. After three years of marriage and fearing the anti-Semitic threats of German Dictator Adolph Hitler, she left her husband and homeland of Austria in 1937. While In London, she met Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Motion Picture Studios. He signed her to a contract and sent her to Hollywood. At a dinner party given by Janet Gaynor, she met composer George Antheil. Shortly after this meeting, Hedy Lamarr and Antheil invented and patented a secret communications system, U.S. Patent 2,292,387. The patent application was dated June 10, 1941, and was approved on August 11, 1942, under her married name "Hedy Kiesler Markey." The purpose of the system was to provide reliable and jam-proof control of long-range torpedoes. The system involved using the frequency hopping principles of Spread Spectrum radio. However, 20 years would pass before it was put to effective use by the United States Navy in torpedo guidance systems, and 40 years before it was permitted by the FCC to be used in commercial radios. This invention became the basis for today's WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems. For this contribution, Lamarr and Antheil were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. At the age of 38 in 1953, Hedy Lamarr became a naturalized United States citizen. She died in Florida 47 years later in 2000. Her remains were cremated and upon her request, her ashes were scattered in Austria's Vienna Woods. In 2014 a memorial to Lamarr was unveiled in Vienna's Central Cemetery. In March of 2023, a historical marker was unveiled near her Florida home by members of local historical societies, including the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation of Boynton Beach. Besides Fritz Mandl, she married five more times, with all the marriages ending in divorce. She had three children. Following her sixth divorce, she remained single and became a recluse for the final 35 years of her life. The telephone became her only means of communication with the outside world, even with her children and close friends. She often talked up to six or seven hours a day on the phone, but she spent hardly any time with anyone in person in her final years. Among her award nominations, she received the 1949 Gold Apple Award for being the Least Cooperative Actress. In 1960 she received a Star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. Hedy Lamarr had roles in at least 30 films. Her estate was valued at $3.3 million when she died at age 85 in Florida in 2000.