Capstone Research

Princess Diana

Princess Diana was an extremely compassionate woman, who used her power and
resources to help those in need. She was confident, and always spoke her mind. 
On July 1, 1961, Diana Frances Spencer was born. Before marrying Prince Charles, she
worked part time as a kindergarten teacher. She first met the prince when she was 16 years old,
as he was in a relationship with his oldest sister. Three years later, and after meeting a grand total
of 13 times, she and the prince were married. She later described July 29, 1981, her wedding day,
as the worst day of her life. Charles and Diana had two children over the course of their
marriage: Prince William was born on June 21, 1982, and Prince Harry was born September 15,
1984. Eight years after Harry’s birth, Charles and Diana separated, however they did not
officially divorce until 1996. The very next year, Diana was killed in a high-speed car crash in a
Paris underpass. People all over the world were devastated by her sudden death, because she had
had such a positive influence for so many people. 
      Princess Diana’s influence was felt by people not just in the United Kingdom, but worldwide.
She publicly supported many charities during her marriage to Prince Charles, but after their
separation she resigned from around 100 of them to focus on those that were closest to her. She
was an advocate for Aids patients, and her attitude helped change mainstream attitudes about the
illness. There is a very well-known picture of Diana shaking hands with an Aids patient without
wearing gloves, which was extremely controversial at the time. She was also an advocate for the
removal of landmines, even walking through an active minefield in Angola, and filming a special
to raise awareness for how devastating land mines can be. Another way that Diana influenced the
public is through being a member on the Board of the Royal Marsden Hospital, which
specialized in cancer treatment. Princess Diana was, and still is, an important and influential
figure, so it makes sense that she was called, “The People’s Princess”. 
 Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr invented the technology that has since led to modern communication and Wi-Fi,
but during her life, people cared much more about her acting career.
Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler, on November 9, 1913/14, in Vienna,
Austria. Her father always encouraged her to be curious, and at the age of five, she started taking
apart music boxes and putting them back together to find out how they worked. Hedy’s mother,
however, pushed her to become an actress. Her big break with respect to acting was her role in
the 1933 film, Ecstasy. The first of her six husbands, Fritz Mandel, actually tried to destroy every
copy of this movie due to the nudity featured, but that was impossible, even for one of the richest
men in Austria. Fritz Mandel was a weapons dealer who had ties to Italian fascist leader, Benito
Mussolini, and later Adolf Hitler. In 1937, at the age of 24, Lamarr disguised herself as her maid
and fled her now-abusive husband by bicycle in the dead of night. Upon her arrival in London,
she met MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer. On the boat ride over to the United States, she
talked her way into a Hollywood contract, and began her American acting career shortly after.
She had an incredibly successful acting career, appearing in dozens of movies from 1938-1958.
Oftentimes on set, she would be allowed to work on experiments in her trailer. John F. Kennedy
and Howard Hughes, aviation tycoon, provided her with the means and encouragement to do so.
After her acting career ended, Hedy Lamarr found herself becoming more and more secluded. In
both 1966 and 1991 she was arrested for shoplifting, but pleaded no contest to avoid court
appearances. Also in 1966, her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, was published, but Lamarr was
loudly spoken about the fact that most of the book was invented by a ghost writer. In the decades
before she passed, on January 19, 2000, the only way to reach Hedy Lamarr was by phone. Not
even her children or closest friends were permitted to see her. Somehow in Hedy’s busy and
dramatic life, she found time to create inventions that laid the groundwork for many modern
technologies.
Hedy Lamarr’s most well-known invention is the developments she made in radio control
during the Second World War. She, along with George Anthiel, developed technology that
allowed radio-controlled torpedoes to hop from frequency to frequency to minimize jamming of
radio signals. However, at the time the U.S. Navy wasn’t open to inventions from people outside
of the military. This technology was also very difficult to implement at the time. But, by 1962, in
the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Navy implemented an updated version of her design
on their ships. This frequency-hopping technology is also the baseline for today’s BlueTooth,
WiFi, and other wireless communication technology. Some of Lamarr’s other inventions are:
fluorescent dog collars, airplane wing modifications, and a variation of a stop light. Hedy was
never given any money or recognition for her inventions during her life. Even after she passed
away, she was given recognition, but her estate never saw any money from her inventions and
influence on modern communication.
 Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has been one of, if not the most influential artist of our generation. Not only
when it comes to the music industry, but to society at large. 
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania.
Her music career started at the young age of 11 years old, when she sang the American national
anthem at a Philadelphia 76ers game. When she was 13, her family moved to Hendersonville,
Tennessee to allow her to pursue a professional music career. She took lots of inspiration from
Shania Twain as she started writing and performing country music, until she signed with
Sony/ATV at the young age of 14 in 2004. Her first album, Taylor Swift, was released in 2006.
Her eighth and most recent album, Evermore, was released in 2021. Over this long career, Swift
has been very successful, even being the youngest artist to win a Grammy for Album of the Year
for her second album, Fearless (until Billie Eilish won the award in 2020). Along with all her
successes she has had two major setbacks as well. The first being her ongoing conflict with
Kanye West. This interesting relationship started in 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards. As
Taylor Swift was handed the award for best female music video for “You Belong With Me”,
West took it upon himself to go onstage, take the microphone from Swift, and deliver an
impromptu speech about how Swift actually didn’t deserve this award, and that it should have
gone to Beyoncé instead. That event was just the first in a long, and still ongoing, uneasy
relationship between the two. Her second setback is more recent, but much more impactful. In
2019, Taylor Swift announced that she would be re-recording her first 6 albums, as her label had
sold her masters without telling her, or giving her a chance to buy them herself. By re-recording
these albums, Swift is taking her music back and devaluing her old recordings that were stolen
from her. 
Taylor Swift has had a huge impact on not just the music industry, but across many areas,
even including politics. She has impacted the music industry by inspiring many up and coming
artists, like Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, and Lennon Stella. As Swift has written every single
one of her 206 songs, she has a very developed and distinct writing style. With these younger
songwriters being inspired by her, it’s easy to tell who is a fan of Taylor’s music based on their
own songwriting styles. Telling a distinct story through a song, an advanced vocabulary, and of
course, an amazing bridge are all hallmarks of Swift’s music, and are popping up more and more
in songs on the radio and all over the internet. Taylor Swift re-recording some of her albums is a
good example for both young musicians and women in general. It is showing young musicians
that you should be able to own your own music, and how you can be taken advantage of in the
music industry. It is also showing women that you can stand up for yourself, even if someone
calls you “crazy” for it. Finally, and most surprisingly, Taylor Swift holds a lot of influence
when it comes to politics. After the 2016 election, Swift regretted not using her voice to speak up
for what she believes in, and has made it a point to share her political views and to encourage her
legion of fans to show up on voting days to share theirs. Overall, Taylor Swift is a talented
performer, and it is impossible to deny the societal influence she holds.
 Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo is everywhere in pop culture today. Her face is sold on phone cases, clothing,
jewelry, and more, but oddly enough, few people know of her life or her art.
Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán,
Mexico City, in Mexico. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a photographer who immigrated to
Mexico from Germany, where he met Matilde Calderón y González, her mother. Frida had two
older sisters, and one younger sister. At the age of 6, Frida contracted polio, which left her with
an injured leg. Her father encouraged her to play sports to help strengthen her leg, in a time when
girls playing sports was virtually unheard of. When she enrolled in the National Preparatory
School in 1922, she was one of few female students attending. While in school, she became
involved in politics, joining both the Young Communist League, and the Mexican Communist
Party. In 1925, she was riding in a bus with her friend, when the bus suddenly crashed into a
streetcar. This bus accident was actually the start of her famed art career. Kahlo was left with
severe injuries, leading to spending weeks in the hospital, not to mention at-home recovery on
top of that. During this long recovery, Kahlo began painting as a way to spend her time. Kahlo
married famous Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera in 1929. The two had a very tumultuous
relationship, with each of them having other partners while they were together. They did divorce,
but got remarried the following year. After creating just under 200 paintings, Kahlo passed away
on July 13, 1954 at the young age of 47. However, her art is still around, and along with it, the
important themes she shared. 
Kahlo’s paintings, and her own personality, followed a lot of themes, including infertility,
sexuality, disability, feminism, and Mexican culture. Frida painted a lot of her own experiences,
some of the most prominent being her infertility, which could have contributed to the nature of
her relationship with her husband, her sexuality, as while married, she saw both men and women,
and portrayed them in her art, and her disability, which was featured in many of her self-
portraits, and which contributed to her career in the first place. Interpreting these themes through
her art was influential because art imitates life, and showcasing some more “taboo” themes can
bring them into conversation. Kahlo has been described as a feminist icon because of her
involvement in politics from a young age, her pride in her own unconventional beauty, and her
love for wearing men’s clothing before it was widely accepted. Finally, during her marriage to
Diego Rivera, he would be commissioned to paint murals all over the globe, and Kahlo would
tag along. Kahlo had a passion for traditional Mexican clothing and adored her culture, so as she
travelled across the world, she was also sharing her culture with everyone she came across.
Because of this, she was a driving force in bringing Mexican culture to the mainstream in an era
before the Internet. Frida Kahlo was a talented artist who shared her influence through her art
and through her own life as well.
 Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin laid the foundation for an important scientific milestone, but she barely got
any credit until after her death.
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born on July 25, 1920 in London, England. She attended St
Paul’s Girls’ School before studying physical chemistry at Newnham College, the women’s
college at Cambridge University. After graduating, she received a fellowship to study physical
chemistry at Cambridge University. She later gave up her fellowship in order to investigate the
physical chemistry of coal and carbon during the Second World War. She used the research
performed there to write her doctoral thesis, and eventually received her doctorate in 1945.
Franklin became a Biophysical Laboratory research fellow in 1951, which is where she did her
most influential work.
Over her research fellowship, Rosalind Franklin did research that led to the discovery of
the structure of DNA. This has had a great effect on understanding how genes are stored and
shared between generations. She was working with PhD students when she discovered the helical
formation of DNA. This concept was the foundation for James Watson and Francis Crick’s
discovery of the double helix formation of DNA. Watson and Crick were shown her work by
Maurice Wilkins without her permission, and actually used her research photos for their data.
Watson, Crick and Wilkins went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.
Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin was not given any credit for her work until after her death, and
as Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, Franklin will never see that honour. 
 Sources

Princess Diana

Diana, princess of Wales | Biography, Wedding, Children, Funeral, & Death 

How Diana became known as 'the people's princess' 
The House of Windsor 
5 ways in which Princess Diana changed the world for good 
Princess Diana's legacy - the modernizing of the British Royal family 

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr: The Incredible Mind Behind Secure WiFi, GPS And Bluetooth 
Hedy Lamarr - Inventions, Movie & Spouses - Biography 
Hedy Lamarr | Biography, Movies, & Facts 
Hedy Lamarr 
Thank This World War II-Era Film Star for Your Wi-Fi

Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift | Biography, Albums, Songs, & Facts 
Taylor Swift Was a Pop Culture Villain. The Pandemic Made Her a Hero. 
Taylor Swift And The Tweet That Could Help Take Down A President 

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo - Paintings, Quotes & Art - Biography  

Frida Kahlo's Influence and Lasting Impact on Society Today 
How Did Frida Kahlo Change The World - 403 Words | Bartleby 
Inside Frida Kahlo's Death And The Mystery Behind It 

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin | Biography, Facts, & DNA | Britannica 

Rosalind Franklin: A Crucial Contribution | Learn Science at Scitable 
Rosalind Franklin Died 60 Years Ago Today Without The Nobel Prize She Deserved 
23 ways that DNA changed the world | The Independent