Women-in-Science Facts

Hedy Lamarr - Hollywood's "most beautiful woman" - co-invented frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology during WWII to guide Allied torpedoes. The Navy dismissed it. Her patent expired in 1959. She never received a dollar. That technology became the foundation for WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Lee Berger found 1,550 fossils of an unknown human species in South Africa's Rising Star cave. The only way in was an 18-cm gap. He couldn't fit. He posted on Facebook for scientists slim enough to squeeze through. Six women answered. They crawled in and pulled out Homo naledi - a lost branch of humanity. Eight years later, Berger lost 25 kg and finally made it in himself.

Temple Grandin got down inside the cattle chutes at Arizona feedlots in the early 1970s to see what the cattle saw, and people thought she was crazy. She found what made them stop: a shadow, a hanging rope, a coat on the fence. Her curved chutes with solid sides now work on ranches and feedlots worldwide. At 79, she still teaches at Colorado State.