Was Nikola Telsa gay?
A genius inventor has to keep secrets
He said he’d “never touched a woman,” and that he needed to be single for his work. Is that all there’s to say about Nikola Tesla’s sexuality?
A 1981 biography, Tesla: Man Out of Time, by Margaret Cheney, notes “whispers that he was a homosexual.” But it wasn’t just whispers.
Tesla was queer — as in super strange.
I’m reading a 1891 newspaper profile of him, which reports:
“He is slender in body, nervous in his movements and intense in his application to the mysteries of electricity. His Greek face lights up and his black eyes gleam when he discourses on his favored theme.”
To read interviews with him over the years is to see the subject of his sexuality being delicately prodded. “Have you ever married?” he’s asked in 1899, when he was 43.
“I did not,” he replies. “Women for certain people nurtures and strengthen its vitality and spirit. Being single does the same to other people. I chose that second path.”
This reply is odd, and I try to map out the parts.
