Oil on Belgian linen canvas.
W 70 x H 70 x D 2.2 cm.
On Tesla's 75th birthday in 1931 he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The magazine requested comments from his peers and Einstein politely responded with: “As an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents… I congratulate you on the great successes of your life’s work.” Also there is an urban legend that when Einstein was asked how it felt to be the smartest man on Earth, Einstein replied, "I wouldn't know. Ask Nikola Tesla". Tesla, like Thomas Edison, didn’t understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. In May 1931, Tesla said the following on Einstein’s theory of relativity: “What is “thought” in relativity, for example, is not science, but some kind of metaphysics based on abstract mathematical principles and conceptions which will be forever incomprehensible to beings like ourselves whose whole knowledge is derived from a three-dimensional world.” Circa 1930, Tesla wrote a poem for his friend George Sylvester Viereck in which he muses about science.
One stanza addresses Newton and contains these lines: “Too bad, Sir Isaac, they dimmed your renown
And turned your great science upside down.
Now a long-haired crank, Einstein by name,
Puts on your high teaching all the blame.
Says: matter and force are transmutable
And wrong the laws you thought immutable.”