★☆☆☆☆ Biography by a cultist who knows no physics

Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla

Marc J. Seifer

If you take part in Internet discussions that sometimes stray onto science, you have probably run into Tesla cultists. These are people who believe that Nikola Tesla was the greatest genius and greatest scientist of all time. I've always been puzzled by this, as looking at short-form biographies such as can be found in encyclopedias, Tesla didn't accomplish all that much. Oh, yeah, clearly he was a genius and a brilliant inventor and played a big role in radio and in making our current power grid practical. But he wasn't much of a scientist. (The cultists, among whom I count Marc J. Seifer, fail to perceive the distinction between "inventor" and "scientist".) He never accepted the early 20th century physics revolution. He thought relativity was wrong, and as far as I can tell had nothing to say about quantum mechanics. So, I read this biography to better understand where all the Tesla worship comes from.

Well, I guess I know the answer now. But Seifer is the worst possible person to write a Tesla biography, and Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius is a very, very bad biography.

Seifer has two problems. First, as hinted, he is a Tesla cultist. He would dispute this, of course, and I will admit that he is capable of perceiving faults in Tesla. But he is not capable of perceiving that Tesla had any intellectual limitations. Seifer interprets any intellectual controversy in Tesla's life in the manner most flattering to Tesla and least flattering to his opponents. Second, Seifer doesn't understand fundamental physics. His explanation of the physics of Tesla's inventions are full of howlers. For instance, he claims that "the earth itself [is] an integral component in the successful implementation of any wireless system." This would come as a big surprise to the Apollo astronauts who used radios to communicate with each other on the Moon.

In combination these two problems become much worse than the sum of their individual badness. I felt that I could not believe anything Seifer had to say, except quotes from documents, and even then you have to wonder if they're taken out of context.

Part of Tesla's mythology is that he died poor because of how badly he was cheated by others such as Edison and Westinghouse and Morgan. This, I was surprised to find, has been exaggerated. Tesla, as one of his investors said, "tended to spend gold as if it were copper." He also failed to fulfill his contract with Morgan. What's more, towards the end of his life he was financially supported by pensions from former colleagues and the Westinghouse Corporation.

Tesla was a genius inventor and deserves better than this literally unbelievable biography.

Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla on Amazon

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