Just like Isaac Newton, Herbert Spencer, Immanuel Kant, and other great names in history, Nikola Tesla remained celibate his entire life and died a virgin. He claimed it was because a relationship with a women would distract him from his work, which he held above most things in his life.
During Tesla's time, matrimony was a custom, and any male who remained single was a butt ridicule. There was gossip that he was a woman-hater, or that he was gay, but these rumors stemmed from the immaturity of his time where people couldn’t understand his love for his work. Tesla actually had many famous females crushing on him during his life, but he was just too busy with his experiments to pursue any relationship.
According to Tesla in the article “Tesla Opposed To Marriage” published in The Electrical Journal in 1896, he said:
“I do not believe that an inventor should marry, because he has so intense a nature and so much in it of wild passionate qualities that in giving himself to a women he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
Also, in an New York Herald article published in 1896, Tesla says:
”For an artist, yes; for a musician, yes; for a writer, yes; but for an inventor, no. The first three must gain inspiration from a woman’s influence and be led by their love to finer achievement, but an inventor has so intense a nature with so much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field… It’s a pity, too, for sometimes we feel so lonely.”
But Tesla truly understood the greatness of the female, and in 1924 explained:
“The power of the true woman is so great that I believe if a beautiful woman–that is to say, one beautiful in spirit, in manner and in thought, in fact, beautiful in every respect, a sort of goddess–were to appear suddenly on earth, she could command the whole world. Her leadership, I believe, would be universally recognized.”
In the end, Nikola Tesla was devoted to science and his electrical research. He chose to be alone, and hoped his dedication and love for his work would forever engrave his name in the history of science.
©Dr. Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla and Marriage
