Hedy Lamarr

Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr fled from her husband and secretly moved to Paris, after an early and brief film career in Germany.

There, she met MGM head Louis B Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood, where she became a major film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s.

But more than an actress, she was an inventor as well. At the beginning of World War II, with composer George Antheil, Lamarr developed spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat jamming of Allied radio communications.

The principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology.