Hedy Lamarr
This onetime MGM contract player and major Hollywood star may be the only woman to have the designation of “actress-slash-scientist.” Her first husband, an Austrian arms manufacturer, prevented her from pursuing her entertainment career and instead forced her to attend meetings about military technology and defense. Lamarr was a highly intelligent woman who apparently listened at those meetings, and once she divorced the husband, she and a friend patented a system of frequency hopping which was designed to guide torpedoes and help them evade radar detection. In 1942, their spread-spectrum invention was ahead of its time and out of the reach of the current military technology, and it wasn’t used until 1962, when technology caught up with the idea. By then the patent had run out, and neither Lamarr nor her associate made any money off the invention, despite the fact that it’s still used in cellular phones and wireless networks.
Napoleon III
In the 1950s, a wave of butter-phobia swept the United States. Because butter contains saturated fat that can lead to heart disease, consumers turned en masse to margarine. Few people today know that margarine owes its existence to Napoleon III. The Emperor (and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) wanted to keep the French army hale and hearty, but butter spoiled too quickly. He therefore offered a prize for anyone who could come up with a fat that could be substituted for butter. Margarine, sometimes called oleomargarine or oleo, was created in the 1860s by a chemist named Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, who used beef fat, water, and milk fat to make the first imitation butter. Although Napoleon III himself didn’t invent the product, his devotion to the French army’s culinary requirements is what made it possible.
It hardly seems fair that one person could be a famous actress as well as a brilliant scientist, at least to the rest of us who struggle to find even one thing to be known for, much less the many accomplishments these people can claim. They didn’t make their living by inventing nifty gadgets, but although we may be thankful for the fruits of their moonlighting, we’re still glad they kept their day jobs.
