World Science Festival 2012: "Hedy Lamarr & George Antheil: Improbable Collaborators, Unconventional Innovators" June 1, 2012

Join us for an evening of intimate conversation and musical performance as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes and some of the most forward-thinking composers of our age, explore the extraordinary lives and legacies of two unconventional innovators: the legendary screen siren Hedy Lamarr and renowned avant-garde composer George Antheil. In a remarkable and unlikely union, Lamarr, known as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’ and Antheil, the self-described ‘bad boy of music,’ joined forces during World War II to invent a secret communication system that presaged today’s GPS, cell phone and Bluetooth technologies. Today, George Antheil is revered as a pioneer of electronic music. Some of his compositions were so far ahead of their time that the technology to bring them to life only materialized decades after his death. The conversation on innovation, science and music will be amplified by a series of performances of Antheil’s seminal scores and explorations of today’s most avant-garde electronica.