# Talk:Nikola Tesla


### Nikola Tesla
I was looking at the recent edits, and noticed three stacked pictures in the Legacy section, which caused a lot of white space to appear on desktop.
I trimmed the picture of the currency added in this September edit because it seemed to be purely decorative and easily the least directly relevant to the biography (which already has a picture of Tesla like that one).
The picture of the monument added in this September edit had an equation, so I went to research it to improve the caption. Looks like it's a work of art by a notable sculptor, so that seemed fine to me. At the same time I found this article from mainstream Croatian press which indicated that the particular monument seems to be part of a number of controversies:

Pašalić, Davor (20 July 2016). "Neobrazovani i primitivni ljudi igraju se posmrtnim ostacima Nikole Tesle" [Uneducated and primitive people are playing with the remains of Nikola Tesla]. Nacional (weekly) (in Croatian).
That title was provocative from the get-go, so I didn't really want to cite that, but the contents is interesting, if even half of it is accurate. Apparently the Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić contracted the sculptor to make these statues, to complement several existing ones (the first in the city being one by Frano Kršinić). The first new statue was placed at Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, the second one was in the controversial Andrićgrad in Bosnia and this was the third one at the Vračar plateau. The base of the third one includes not just the Tesla unit formula, but a signature of Tesla in Cyrillic, which is apparently the only one such signature ever preserved. The location near the Church of Saint Sava was understood to be related to the recent request by Irinej, Serbian Patriarch to Nikolić for Tesla's remains to be moved from the Tesla Museum to that church. Some atheist organizations protested the event at the time, and this is where that provocative article title comes from.
Apparently this was one in a series of attempts by the Serbian Orthodox Church for Tesla's ashes to be transferred to them. The article says that in 2015 they claimed that "Satanist rituals" were being performed at the museum, which provoked the Serbian Ministry of Culture to issue a statement denying that. In 2014, they had gotten the Ministry of Energy under Zorana Mihajlović and the Mayor of Belgrade Siniša Mali to sign an agreement about moving the urn, but that caused significant public protests, and the agreement was tabled.
So, uh, yeah. Should we be posting a picture of this particular monument from this particular location in this article, when the context is so, so much politics, yet we eschew that? Especially when the politics doesn't seem to really relate to Tesla's actual life, rather how he's perceived in particular places not really that relevant to the average English reader.
If we keep it, maybe we need to start explaining some of the Tesla legacy politics instead, so the modern-day reader starts to understand some of this influence as well as baggage? For example, this might also help explain the already briefly mentioned Nikola Tesla Memorial Center. That is also mostly about perception in particular places not really that relevant to the average English reader, but at least it's a story that had recently brought Croatia and Serbia together around Tesla's legacy - and by all accounts, that was more in line with Tesla's own biography, seeing how he had visited both Zagreb and Belgrade in his life. At the same time, it could put the politicking about him in in context (Croatian and Serbian politicians each trying to honor him more and more).
I'm thinking we might have some space to allow for this, seeing how we have just a handful of paragraphs on legacy here. In comparison, Marie Curie#Legacy is extended by a much much longer Marie Curie#Commemorations section, and it was similarly long back in 2012 when it had been listed as GA, too. --Joy (talk) 11:38, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

BTW, I think this is not a discussion related to Tesla's nationality and ethnicity per se, rather about how to deal with the knock-on effects of those concepts. But, it could be broadly construed to fall under the former, so we can also move it to the subpage. --Joy (talk) 11:47, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
Another option would be to display a couple of the images horizontally in a gallery. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
That would work as long we abide by WP:GALLERY. --Joy (talk) 00:40, 31 October 2025 (UTC)
Since there's apparently little interest in this, I'll just prune the image related to controversy as well. --Joy (talk) 21:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)
Commemorations might be better, regardless don't need to scrub the legacy section until that change is made Beach00 (talk) 09:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
@Beach00 there is a need to maintain the good article standard, esp. as it was recently reviewed. --Joy (talk) 09:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)