The Only Woman in the Room, by Marie Benedict

A review by Airin Dutta, a doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who received the Zonta International Foundation Amelia Earhart Fellowship in 2020. 

“The Only Woman in the Room” by Marie Benedict was a glimpse into the gripping life of Hedy Lamarr, otherwise known to the world only as a Hollywood star, with her technological contributions merely treated as intriguing footnotes. Her captivating beauty was a curse, as she observed, “My face has been my misfortune, a mask I cannot remove.” 

Her life is truly stranger than fiction -- she survived the persecution of Jews through marriage to a powerful arms dealer, escaped the abusive marriage and Austria in the face of invasion by Hitler, only to land in Hollywood, fending off advances from predatory producers and having a successful yet unsatisfactory movie career of portraying vacuous femme fatale. Undeterred by her struggle, she became a role model for modern women as a single mother, that too through child adoption, in the prime of her career. 

Trying to assist in the Allied war effort coupled with survivor’s guilt, as well as being privy to military secrets discussed during armament deals with the Nazis and the knowledge she acquired from scientific journals available to her back in Austria, finally came to fruition in 1941. She with her friend, a composer and pianist George Antheil, developed a device for synchronizing the guidance signal for radio-controlled torpedoes between the transmitter and receiver, because this signal would be distributed over several frequencies to protect from enemy jamming. However, in a blatant act of sexism, the US Navy was not receptive of a technology invented by a “beautiful” woman, even though they were struggling with the torpedo system. Additionally, the National Council rejected the implementation, citing its bulkiness for integration with submarine systems, although it was roughly the size of a watch. To add insult to injury, she was told to do her job which was to captivate crowds with her charm and raised funds for the war. It was only in the 1960’s, that the invention eventually led to the creation of Bluetooth and WiFi technology in the modern-day cell phones. She, with her partner, received their long overdue credit when inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

All enlightened women and I are grateful to her for fighting to make a better world for us. Hedy Lamarr, your truly beautiful soul shall inspire us to carry on the struggle to uplift many more unfortunate beings. I am thankful to the author to bring to light her achievements, buried deep beneath the failures of humanity. Though, this book has a watered-down version of her scientific efforts, it was enough to pique the curiosity of interested readers. Finally, my takeaway was the “Da-vinci”-esque ultimate unification of art and science. From a scientific mindset, I was amazed by their idea of frequency hopping inspired from changing scales while playing a musical piece. 

Finally, here I am with her star on the “Hollywood walk of Fame”!