There are a lot of assumptions about Tesla's private life, but the only thing that we are sure of is that he never got married. Due to his indifference towards women, he was a perfect material for gossiping and whispers that he was gay, but there is no evidence of this. Despite being surrounded by beautiful women, many of them who grew to love him, no one became Nikola Telsa's wife.
The problem is not their failure to meet his expectations, but he did not want any distractions from his professional endeavors. It was Tesla who said: “I don’t think that you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
But still, we have to mention a few women that have enrichened Tesla’s life.
Katherine Johnson
Robert Johnson's wife, Katherine Johnson, wrote Tesla some of the tenderest letters. The corresponding letters are held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, precisely 150 letters. Katherine loved him with the greatest passion, and she knew Tesla’s habits, virtues, and flaws and took years trying to get closer to him. She was an intelligent, pretty woman, never completely satisfied with the role of a housewife and mother. The problem is that Tesla never returned the affection with the intensity she expected. He responded to her with great admiration and friendship. When Katherine Johnson died in 1925, she asked her husband Robert to take care of Nikola Tesla when she was gone.
Sarah Bernhardt
Among other women that wanted to draw Tesla’s attention was a French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Thanks to his success in America, Nikola Tesla became bait for many successful intriguing women. His professional path took him to Paris for lectures, and he was famous in the whole of Europe, and both the scientific and journalist world talked about him. Sarah was eager to meet Tesla, so she arranged for French engineer Andre Blondel to talk about her. But she could not wait for the reaction, and instead, she acted. When she was passing in the hotel “De le pe” when Tesla was in the restaurant with Blondel, she looked at him mysteriously and deliberately dropped her handkerchief in front of him. He immediately jumped, picked up the handkerchief, said: “Miss, you dropped your handkerchief!” and continued conversation with Blondel. They met several times later in New York and attended dinner and parties together.
Marguerite Merrington
Johnson's house was the scene of Tesla's meeting many intriguing women for whom it is said that they were sexually attracted to him. Marguerite Merrington, a writer, journalist, and pianist, was one of them. She was very special to Tesla because she was charming, moderate, intelligent, and sophisticated. For years, he corresponded with her. His clumsy question once led him to ask her why she doesn't wear diamonds and jewelry, and she replied that it is not her choice. Clearly, Tesla liked her for not wearing jewelry, and she told him where she would spend her money if she had enough. Marguerite said she would spend the money to buy a house outside the city, but she would not want to commute from the suburbs. He replied that once he began earning millions, he would buy her a square block in New York to build her a villa with plenty of trees surrounding it so that she wouldn't have to leave the city.
Lenka Dunđerski
Tesla had many famous and prominent friends, and one of them was a Serbian poet Laza Kostić whose friendship led Nikola Tesla to Lenka Dunđerski. Lenka Dunđerski was the daughter of one of the most famous landowners and industrialists from Vojvodina, Serbia. Laza was in love with Lenka but never acted on his feelings due to the age difference, he was 50 at that time, and Lenka was 21. Then Laza concluded that Lenka should marry Nikola Tesla. He found him an ideal man for such a beautiful, educated, and sensual girl. Laza wrote to Lenka about Tesla, and step by step, when she saw his photograph, she became enchanted with Tesla and declared that he was the love of her life. In June 1895., Laza Kostić wrote to Tesla about Lenka, also stating that he could count on Lenka’s father’s richness for a million-dollar loan. We don’t know the answer for Lenka becoming Tesla’s wife, but unfortunately, marriage would not happen because Lenka died in 1895. of typhus in Vienna. Laza wrote to Tesla: “Even your biography will not be without romance, the most beautiful and the saddest at the same time”
May Cline
The archive of Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade keeps about 2500 letters and different papers (newspaper articles, drawings …) which May wrote to Tesla. This tells us that she wrote him often but there is no record of Tesla’s answers to her. She lived in New Jersey and two of her book found a place in Tesla’s library: „The Principles of Bird Flight“ (published in 1905) and „Trailing Evolution“. Many things about this relationship are unclear, and the mystery is greater because she had very unreadable handwriting.
Frances Warwick, Flora Dodge, and Catherine Moth
These three ladies were recorded to try to win Tesla’s heart. Numerous letters reveal how close they all tried to be to the magnificent scientist.
Milka Trnina
Tesla's favorite music artist, and good friend, was Milka Trnina. She was a soprano opera performer famous for her subtle and expressive performances of Wagner, Mozart, and Puccini. One of Wagner's greatest admirers was the Swiss chocolate manufacturer Carl Russ-Suchard, who named his world-renowned chocolate brand Milka after her.
Anne Morgan
Another very close female friend of Tesla was Anna, the daughter of one of the richest men in the USA, John Pierpont Morgan. She fought for female rights, and although her name was connected to many men, she never married. Tesla was a constant longing in her life, and she exchanged letters with him until his death.
Elsie Ferguson
Tesla had a specific taste in women. He liked trim, graceful and agile women such as Elise. He always said she could dress with taste and used to say she was the most elegant and stunning actress on stage.
Women’s rights
In his lifetime, Tesla wrote to several women whose influence he greatly valued. After Katherine Johnson’s death, he gave an interview for Collier's magazine under the title “When Woman Is Boss”. His statement was visionary: “It is clear to any trained observer, and even to the sociologically untrained, that a new attitude toward sex discrimination has come over the world through the centuries, receiving an abrupt stimulus just before and after the World War.
This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior. The modern woman, who anticipates in merely superficial phenomena the advancement of her sex, is but a surface symptom of something deeper and more potent fermenting in the bosom of the race.
It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.”
Tesla respected many women, but none of them had the honor of becoming Nikola Tesla's wife.