The Brains Behind the Talent

Gabriellebirchak/ November 10, 2020/ Modern History

I have spent most of my life with one foot in the enter­tain­ment indus­try and the oth­er foot in sci­ence and math. I may not be act­ing today, but I can still cry on cue at the mere men­tion of Joaquin Phoenix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lI2eBdbX18

I am proud to be part of a tribe of women who suc­cess­ful­ly keep one foot in the enter­tain­ment indus­try while keep­ing the oth­er foot in math and sci­ence. In fact, there may be more than you might know.

If you are read­ing my blog on your phone, you can thank the most beau­ti­ful woman in the world for that. Hedy Lamarr, born on Novem­ber 9, 1914, was an actor and an inventor.

Her life was quite an adven­ture. She was born in Vien­na, Aus­tria-Hun­gary. Her father was a bank man­ag­er, and her moth­er was a pianist. She won a beau­ty con­test at the age of 12 and began act­ing. In her ear­ly life, she had mar­ried an excep­tion­al­ly wealthy Friedrich Man­dl. Man­dl kept ques­tion­able com­pa­ny, as he often asso­ci­at­ed and worked with Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni and Adolf Hitler. Since Man­dl often want­ed to keep a close eye on Hedy, he had her accom­pa­ny him to his meet­ings, which were often with mil­i­tary sci­en­tists. It was in these meet­ings where she learned about applied sciences.

Lamarr often felt as though Man­dl kept her impris­oned in his “Prison of Gold.” And so she planned her escape. She had made friends with one of the maids and spent time with her to learn her man­ner­isms, behav­iors, and roles in the cas­tle. On one fate­ful night, before a din­ner par­ty, she con­vinced her hus­band to let her wear all of her jew­el­ry to the din­ner. The din­ner was for Ernst von Starhem­berg, the mil­i­tary gov­er­nor of Vien­na and a fas­cist. Short­ly after the din­ner, Lamarr met up with her maid, dressed in her uni­form, and wear­ing all of her jew­el­ry, escaped to Paris. It was a bril­liant plan that allowed her to sell the jew­el­ry for cash.

From Paris, she trav­eled to the Unit­ed States with Louis B. May­er. In the states, she worked at Metro Gold­wyn May­er Stu­dios. They pub­li­cized her as “the most beau­ti­ful woman in the world!” More­over, even though she had a very suc­cess­ful career as an actor, she forged out a career as an inventor.

She had many inven­tions, some of which we still do not know. How­ev­er, the inno­va­tions that we know includ­ed a cube to drop in water for a car­bon­at­ed bev­er­age and a design for a faster air­plane that she designed with Howard Hugh­es. Hugh­es came to love her inven­tions so much that he helped equip her stu­dio trail­er with a lab­o­ra­to­ry and gear that she could work with between takes on the set.

World War II weighed heav­i­ly on her mind as she became dis­traught over the dam­age brought about by Nazi Ger­many. In Sep­tem­ber 1940, while work­ing in Hol­ly­wood, her life was very busy. She had recent­ly divorced and rais­ing her adopt­ed baby boy on her own when she learned that a Ger­man sub­ma­rine tor­pe­doed a ship called City of Benares. Benares was full of evac­uees sail­ing from Liv­er­pool to Cana­da to escape the Ger­man bombs. Two hun­dred and forty-five lives were lost, includ­ing 87 chil­dren. Among the sur­vivors were only 13 chil­dren. Lamarr was hor­ri­fied. And so she decid­ed to ded­i­cate her inven­tions to the Unit­ed States military.

One such inven­tion was a radio-con­trolled tor­pe­do. The trick was how the US mil­i­tary could con­trol a tor­pe­do with­out the ene­mies get­ting access to the radio fre­quen­cies. Work­ing with her friend, George Antheil, she and Antheil designed a fre­quen­cy hop­ping spread spec­trum, known as FHSS. FHSS is the process of trans­mit­ting radio sig­nals across ran­dom fre­quen­cies so that ene­mies track­ing radio sig­nals could not detect or jam the fre­quen­cies. Since the radio sig­nal was spread across var­i­ous fre­quen­cies, ene­my boats could not piece togeth­er the radio fre­quen­cies and thus could not inter­cept the mes­sage shared between Amer­i­can ships. Today, this process of fre­quen­cy hop­ping spread spec­trum is used on our Blue­tooth and GPS Tech­nolo­gies. She was bril­liant, even with­out a for­mal education.

This arti­cle at Amer­i­can Sci­en­tist pro­vides a well-devel­oped expla­na­tion of FHSS: 

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping

How­ev­er, Hedy Lamarr is one of sev­er­al women who have forged a career as a sci­en­tist and actor. For exam­ple, Lisa Kudrow, the mul­ti-award-win­ning and insane­ly tal­ent­ed actor who played Phoebe Buf­fay on Friends, also holds a biol­o­gy degree from Vas­sar. After she earned her degree, she moved back to her home in Los Ange­les, where for eight years, she worked with her father, Physi­cian and Neu­rol­o­gist Lee Kudrow. Part of her research includ­ed study­ing left-hand­ed­ness and the preva­lence of migraines. She, along with her father and two oth­ers, pub­lished a paper titled Hand­ed­ness and Headache, which is an inter­est­ing study that shows among those who strug­gle with clus­ter headaches, fif­teen per­cent of migraine suf­fer­ers are left-handed.

You can read Kudrow’s paper here: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/142/10/2938/5556832

Now, I have to men­tion May­im Bia­lik! Her act­ing cred­its include Blos­som on the TV show Blos­som, Jodi Funkhauser on Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, and, of course, Amy Far­rah Fowler on The Big Bang The­o­ry. May­im received her bachelor’s degree in Neu­ro­science with a minor in Hebrew and Jew­ish stud­ies in 2000. In 2007, she earned her Ph.D. degree in Neu­ro­science from UCLA.

Dr. Bialik’s the­sis is titled Hypo­thal­a­m­ic Reg­u­la­tion in Rela­tion to Mal­adap­tive, Obses­sive-Com­pul­sive, Affil­ia­tive, and Sati­ety behav­iors in Prad­er-Willi syn­drome. Prad­er-Willi Syn­drome results from an abnor­mal­i­ty of chro­mo­some 15. In young chil­dren, symp­toms include weak mus­cles, slow devel­op­ment, and con­stant hunger. As a result, they are prone to exces­sive eat­ing dis­or­ders, which can even lead to death. Dr. Bia­lik cov­ered the research on how the brain reg­u­lates cer­tain behav­iors in those who strug­gle with Prad­er-Willi syndrome. 

You can find her dis­ser­ta­tion here: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009866871

Final­ly, with the hol­i­days upon us, I have to men­tion one of my favorite actors who starred in a hand­ful of hol­i­day love sto­ries. She starred in A Crown for Christ­mas, Com­ing Home for Christ­mas, Sud­den­ly San­ta, Christ­mas at Grand Val­ley, Christ­mas at Dol­ly­wood, Per­fect Match, and Camp­fire Kiss, to name a few, as well as her break­out TV show The Won­der Years. This actor would be Dr. Dan­i­ca McKel­lar, the mathematician.

She grad­u­at­ed from UCLA in 1998 with a degree in math­e­mat­ics. In 2005, she received her Ph.D. in math­e­mat­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. In 2007, she not only wrote and per­formed on the life­time web-based minis­eries Inspec­tor Mom; she also pub­lished the book Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Sur­vive Mid­dle School Math with­out Los­ing Your Mind or Break­ing a Nail.

After that, she went on to pub­lish three more high school math books. Doc­tor McKel­lar, along with Lin­coln Chayes and Brandy Winn, wrote a the­o­rem titled Per­co­la­tion and Gibbs States mul­ti­plic­i­ty for fer­ro­mag­net­ic Ashkin-Teller Mod­els on two dimen­sions on two dimen­sions.

This the­o­rem address­es a two-dimen­sion­al math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el called the Ashkin-Teller mod­el. McKel­lar explains it as fol­lows: To envi­sion this par­tic­u­lar mod­el, imag­ine a lat­tice grid with mag­net­ic prop­er­ties that are deter­mined based on tem­per­a­ture. These prop­er­ties have a name. One name is called per­co­la­tion, and the oth­er name is called Gibbs states. This the­o­rem shows that even with these two prop­er­ties, the state at which the prop­er­ties hap­pen and do not hap­pen, occur at the same temperature.

You can read her the­o­rem here: http://www.danicamckellar.com/pdf/percolation.pdf

McKel­lar states that act­ing is her pri­ma­ry career, while she con­sid­ers math­e­mat­ics more of a pas­sion project. For me, I waf­fle between both worlds, depend­ing on where the mon­ey comes from. It’s my gig, it’s my hus­tle, and I am proud of it!

The list of bril­liant enter­tain­ers in the world is long! 

• We all know about the rock star Dr. Bri­an May, who also hap­pens to be an astrophysicist. 
• Dr. Dex­ter Hol­land, the lead singer of the band Off­spring, is a virol­o­gist and mol­e­c­u­lar biologist. 
• Dr. Ken Jeong, known for his com­e­dy and role in The Hang­over movies, is also a physi­cian and main­tained his license up until a few years ago. 
• Dr. Greg Graf­fin, the lead singer of Bad Reli­gion, hold a Ph.D. in Evo­lu­tion­ary Biology. 
• Michael Crich­ton, the author of Juras­sic Park and The Androm­e­da Strain, holds a med­ical degree. 
• John Urschel, once a guard and cen­ter for the Bal­ti­more Ravens, is now a fifth year Ph.D. stu­dent of math­e­mat­ics at Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Technology. 
• One of my favorite come­di­ans, Rowan Atkin­son, holds of Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Elec­tri­cal Engineering. 
• Ash­ton Kutch­er stud­ied bio­chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in college. 
• Super Mod­el Cindy Craw­ford was accept­ed into North­west­ern as a Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major. 
• Teri Hatch­er stud­ied math and engi­neer­ing in col­lege before her career took off, with her break­out role as a dancer on The Love Boat. 
• And, Mike Judge, the mas­ter­mind behind Beav­is and Butthead and King of the Hill, holds a degree in physics.

Fun sto­ry, when I was in col­lege study­ing physics, I had a crum­my job at Kinko’s in Bur­bank. Who should walk in and need copies than Mike Judge. I was exhaust­ed from study­ing and work­ing and was not on my A‑game, and found myself vent­ing to him about it. Yeah, I was vent­ing to stranger whom I did not know was Mike Judge. He was so encour­ag­ing and told me not to give up. He then drew a car­toon fig­ure for me and signed it with his name: Mike Judge. THEN I real­ized who he was! That was not only the high­light of my job at Kinko’s, but the high­light of my life! So, I can offi­cial­ly go on the record to so that Mike Judge is a real­ly nice guy!

For me, it is an absolute joy to have my feet in mul­ti­ple worlds. For any­one lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast, I want to remind you that any­thing is pos­si­ble. If you love to do two dif­fer­ent things but think that they are both not com­pat­i­ble, think again. I have gone from the stage to singing to sci­ence to com­e­dy. Dur­ing my time at NASA, I had the absolute joy of meet­ing some excep­tion­al sci­en­tists who were also incred­i­ble musi­cians. Dur­ing my time doing stand up, I had the hon­or of meet­ing sev­er­al come­di­ans with advanced degrees and cere­bral jobs. The world of enter­tain­ment and the world of sci­ence are not entire­ly exclu­sive. The rea­son why is because the foun­da­tions of art, sci­ence, and music are all math­e­mat­i­cal­ly found­ed. His­tor­i­cal­ly, math­e­mat­ics was born out of cre­ativ­i­ty. All of these sub­jects beau­ti­ful­ly and inclu­sive­ly con­tribute to the other.

So for those who think that you can­not have two exclu­sive pas­sions, you can. From my expe­ri­ence, it is pos­si­ble to be an actor and a math­e­mati­cian; it is pos­si­ble to be a mod­el and an inven­tor; it is pos­si­ble to be a rock­et sci­en­tist and a rock star. It is pos­si­ble to do all of these things. All you have to do is believe that you can and put some hus­tle into your muscle!

Until next time, CARPE DIEM! 

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Here’s a throw back to the days of my show Gab’s Blabs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lI2eBdbX18