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Biography · Noble People · 66 / 100

Nikola Tesla

1856–1943 · Electrical engineer and inventor

Portrait of Nikola Tesla
Napoleon Sarony · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Bio

Serbian-American electrical engineer whose work on alternating-current systems, including the induction motor and polyphase transmission, shaped modern electrical power distribution. He held around 300 patents worldwide and experimented with high-frequency currents, wireless transmission and radio. Several of his most ambitious later projects, including Wardenclyffe Tower, went unfunded and unfinished, and he died in comparative obscurity.