Nikola Tesla and the Nobel Prize

Unbelievable but true is that Tesla had not received the Nobel Prize - the greatest honor which can be awarded to a scientist for his lifework. To tell the truth, Tesla was awarded that prize in 1912, but he refused it when he heard that he was to share it with Edison. Why did he do that?

Tesla considered Edison a great scientist but before that a businessman who earned money from his knowledge. He believed that a true scientist cannot be a trader, yet someone who makes inventions which his descendants would use and improve. Therefore, Tesla wanted to be and to remain a scientist and that is why he did not want to be placed in the same category as Edison, a man who, before everything, was a good businessman.

Apart from that, he did not want to accept the offered prize and a few dozen thousand dollars that went along with it because he somehow disliked the persons who were awarding it. The prominent prize had been given to Guglielmo Marconi, who, on the basis of an idea stolen from Tesla, had invented radio. Tesla considered that Marconi had been awarded for thievery and not for his scientific work. What is more important, the Swedish Academy of Sciences knew that there was a trial in process which was to prove that Tesla was the father of radio, but that did not hinder their decision to award Marconi. That was a great injustice that Tesla could not overcome.

Tesla was assured that for a scientist like he had been prizes, money, popularity were just empty flattering, while the true reward was the appliance of his discoveries in every man’s life.

Finally, this is what he replied to a question why he had voluntarily given up such a great and flattering award:

“For a man such award would mean a lot. In a thousand years there will be many thousands of the Nobel Prize winners. I have not four dozen of my creations identified with my name in technical literature. For any of these I would give all the Nobel prizes during the next thousand years.”