A glamorous Hollywood star, a renegade composer, and the mathematical development of spread spectrum communications.
Speaker: Mark Goresky
Date: Mon, May 30, 2016
Location: PIMS, University of British Columbia
Conference: 2016 Niven Lecture
Subject: Mathematics, Applied Mathematics
Class: Scientific
Date: Mon, May 30, 2016
Location: PIMS, University of British Columbia
Conference: 2016 Niven Lecture
Subject: Mathematics, Applied Mathematics
Class: Scientific
Abstract:
During World War II Hedy Lamarr, a striking Hollywood actress, together with George Antheil, a radical composer, invented and patented a secret signaling system for the remote control of torpedoes. The ideas in this patent have since developed into one of the ingredients in modern digital wireless communications. The unlikely biography of these two characters, along with some of the more modern developments in wireless communications will be described.
