Video: Oddities and phobias of Nikola Tesla: why the "lord of lightning" doomed himself to loneliness
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
July 10 marks 161 years from the date of birth Nikola Tesla - the famous American inventor of Serbian origin, engineer, physicist, scientist ahead of his time. For his discoveries, journalists nicknamed Tesla "the lord of lightning", and for his way of life - "a brilliant hermit." In addition to voluntarily renouncing personal relationships, he had many other oddities and phobias.
Everyone knows about his scientific experiments, but the personality of the inventor himself is no less interesting. There is no reason to argue about his intelligence and talent, but his lifestyle caused misinterpretation among his contemporaries. Even as a child, strange behavior dictated by unusual phobias and obsessions began to be noticed behind him.
Tesla, with manic persistence, nurtured willpower, striving to gain complete control over himself. In his autobiography, he wrote: “At first I had to suppress my desires, but gradually they began to coincide with what the will dictated. After several years of training, I achieved such complete control of myself that I playfully curbed passions, which ended in disaster for many of the most powerful people. At the same time, at first he allowed himself to become addicted to something, and then by an effort of will he forced himself to give up the bad habit. So it was with gambling, with smoking, with a cup of coffee in the morning - first, a hobby to the stage of a threat to health, and then - renunciation and complete indifference.
He was prone to extravagant acts - he could, for example, suddenly do a somersault while walking. Or read Goethe's Faust by heart. The inventor walked for many hours alone, as he believed that they stimulate the work of thought, which no one should interfere with. He slept very little, considering it a waste of time.
Biographers write that Tesla suffered from a morbid love of cleanliness and mesophobia (fear of germs and infection). If a fly landed on his table in a restaurant, he asked to replace the tablecloth and cutlery. He demanded that all tableware undergo special sterilization in the kitchen, but even after that he always wiped everything with napkins.
He was afraid of catching an infection, so he threw away gloves and handkerchiefs, putting them on once. On the same occasion, Tesla avoided shaking hands and constantly washed his hands, each time wiping them with a new towel. However, this phobia was explained quite simply: twice Tesla had been ill with serious illnesses, and when he managed to recover from cholera, he began to be afraid of any infection.
The phobia seems completely inexplicable, because of which Tesla felt such a strong disgust for pearls that he got up from the table if there were women with pearl jewelry behind him. Round surfaces disgusted him, he could not even get used to billiard balls for a long time. The scientist wrote: “At the sight of pearls I was on the verge of a seizure. But I was completely mesmerized by the sparkling of crystals or objects with sharp edges and smooth surfaces. I counted how many steps I took while walking, and I calculated in cubic units the volume of a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee or a piece of food, otherwise I did not feel the pleasure of eating."
Nikola Tesla never married, had no children, and never had an intimate relationship. He believed that a woman is "the biggest thief of spiritual energy." He told friends about his platonic passion for Sarah Bernhardt. But he was convinced that “only writers and musicians need marriage, as it contributes to their inspiration. A scientist, however, must devote all his feelings only to science, because, having divided them, he will not be able to give science everything that is required of him."
Tesla wrote: “In continuous solitude, the mind becomes sharper and sharper. You don't need a big laboratory to think and invent. Ideas are born in the absence of influence on the mind of external conditions. Be alone, only in it ideas are born. Most people are so absorbed in the outside world that they completely do not notice what is happening inside them."
Some biographers suggest that Tesla was aware of the fact that his oddities complicate life not only for him, but also for those around him. That is why he preferred to be in solitude. Others are convinced that these oddities and phobias were not the cause, but the result of the researcher's voluntary loneliness. And psychoanalysts explain this by the fact that the scientist was a manic person with suppressed sexuality, whose energy was directed to the scientific channel.
Some considered him an eccentric and a magician, others - a genius. Be that as it may, his personality leaves no one indifferent: interesting facts from the life of Nikola Tesla
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