STEM careers and the arts sadly aren’t always seen as things that go together. There is a stigma behind both things that says they just don’t go together. That doesn’t have to be the case. After all, people in the arts are known as being creative and inventing things takes creativity as well, so why must the two things be mutually exclusive? When you picture an inventor, an image of a “mad scientist” with wild hair and a lab coat probably comes to mind. You probably didn’t picture an old Hollywood bombshell, did you? You wouldn’t be alone in that, but that’s exactly what actress and inventor, Hedy Lamarr is.

Hedy had a knack for inventing things--she even helped Howard Hughes design more streamlined planes by making the wings less square. She figured it out from studying how birds and fish move. As well as being an actress, Hedy was a brilliant mind who went on to invent technology that would later be used to invent GPS. After talking with composer George Antheil about his work on player pianos and how he attempted to synchronize them, she applied the technology, along with her own knowledge of weaponry, to torpedoes. She figured if radio-controlled torpedoes could switch from one frequency to another they wouldn’t be detected as easily.  The Navy got the patents for it, but never did anything with them.  Hedy and George weren’t given credit for their game-changing invention. They weren’t taken seriously—especially Hedy since she was also a woman—because they were in the arts. She didn’t get any recognition for what she did until 1997 when her and George received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award.  Hedy also was awarded the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award the same year.