COLUMBIA
LIBRARY
COLUMNS
 

Nikola Tesla at Columbia:

Tesla-Johnson Correspondence

Revives a Famous Association

KENNETH M. SWEZEY
 

IN acquiring, last December, a collection of letters from the
famous scientist-inventor Nikola Tesla to Robert Under¬
wood Johnson, poet and editor of The Century Magazine,
the Special Collections Department revived a unique association
of Tesla with Columbia University. It also made available to the
researcher a correspondence that reveals the warmth, wit, loyalty
in friendship, and wide-ranging interests of this enigmatic genius
better than any other known. The collection was obtained from
Mrs. Agnes Holden, daughter of Dr. Johnson, with assistance of
funds from the Friends of the Columbia Libraries, and part of it
formed the nucleus of the exhibition of Tesla memorabilia held
recently in Butler Library.

To understand better the strange blend of poetry and science,
fervor and intellect, in Tesla's character, as shown in his work and
particularly in these letters, it may help to consider his extraor¬
dinarily cosmopolitan  background.  Born in   1856  in  Smiljan,

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