What was Tesla's opinion on Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics?

Alex, below, is correct.

Unfortunately, Tesla was not educated enough to actually read and understand any of Einstein’s math. He had no background in physics. He essentially had the equivalent to a BS in engineering.

The brilliance is demonstrated by working from so little education and changing the technology of the course of mankind.

Had to answer a comment:

You misunderstood my last statement. Tesla’s brilliance is demonstrated from working with little education, and changing the course of the technology of mankind.

The vast majority of contributions in science, medicine, archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and so on are from amateurs. Einstein was in fact an amateur, failed in college, was working as a patent clerk trying to publish in big high profile journals. Newton was a farm hand, as was Brahms, Beethoven. DeVinci was a drifter.

The most educated have contributed little, in fact, now we are going from a chaos of hypotheses into a collapse into a randomness of hypotheses in science, because of the educational system. the problem is, you have to have a unique original idea to get a doctorate; the same is true of publishing a paper. Since there are only a limited number of truths, actually, only one (1), this means that each graduate splays us into further randomness.

The only thing Quantum Physicists have proven incontrovertibly is that they can blow stuff up. The rest are just a plethora of ridiculous hypotheses.

lets not forget Michael Faraday!

The gratifying point about most of the answers to this post is that almost everyone seems to have understood that looking at Tesla and Einstein is like looking at apples and oranges, there is just no way in which a comparison can be made. Tesla was the practical genius who undertook huge hands on projects while Einstein was the theoretical genius who evolved incredibly involved and complicated theories on physics while sitting in his arm chair. Where the two differ is that while Einstein never usually bothered repudiating his detractors and never ever had anything bad, let alone derogatory to say about a fellow scientist, Tesla used to rant about the way in which Einstein had succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of the scientists of the world with his theories of special and general relativity, in fact he stopped just short of calling him the devil. However, bear in mind that this does not mean that Tesla was wrong! Tesla like most Classical physicists believed in the existence of an aether as the medium through which electromagnetic radiation propagated. Einstein with his theory that light was the limiting speed of the Universe did in fact seem to be using a faulty allegory; it is not only light that is the limiting speed of the Universe but all electromagnetic radiation. This makes the statement far more mundane, instead of speaking of light as the limiting speed of the Universe, imagine saying ‘Radiowaves are the limiting speed of the Universe’ or that ‘ x-rays are the limiting speed of the Universe’ or even gamma rays. That would set the cat among the pigeons, because while people are unwilling to question the fact that light might be the limiting speed of the Universe since light has a certain divine aura about it, they might not be so accommodating while considering x-ray radio waves or gamma rays as the limiting speed of the Universe.

That said, what was Einstein really getting at? Einstein seemed to imply that the speed of light varied in accord with an observers point of view. A stationary observer on Earth observes spaceships A and B moving in the same direction toward the Earth. Spaceship A has speed 0.5c and spaceship B has speed 0.80c.

Determine the velocity of spaceship A as measured by an observer at rest in spaceship B. Solution:

We take the S frame to be attached to the Earth and the S’ frame to be attached to spaceship B moving with velocity v = −0.8c along the x axis. Spaceship A has velocity[math] u_x[/math] = −0.50c in S. It follows from :

that spaceship A has velocity [math]u‘_x[/math] = 0.50c in S’ . Spaceship A moves with velocity 0.5c as measured by an observer at rest in spaceship B.

More examples could be given but here it is clear that according to Einstein space and time are fixed at all but vary in both time and dimensions from observer to observer. Is this acceptable? Is this what we actually experience? The answer is no, but then again we are not moving at relativistic speeds. Put in plain language there is no preferred frame of reference where light is travelling at different speeds for different observers.

What are the pros and cons of the two theories? Obviously going merely from observation and empirical result, there can be little doubt that Tesla’s aether theory wins hands down, providing that theory could also explain Max Plancks discovery of quanta, which it couldn’t, leaving the door wide open for the fantastical plastic theories of Einstein and the even more bizarre if possible theories of quantum mechanics. Why does Tesla’s aether theory win hands down? It wins hands down because that is exactly the manner in which all waves be they water, sound or waves through solids propagate through a medium. Light and electromagnetic radiation also exhibits the same exact properties. Yet, alas, a suitable medium could not be identified. Now, Gestalt Aether Theory has a version of the aether that explains perfectly all the properties of light including its constant speed, its dispersion according to the inverse square law, its identity as a fixed quanta of energy and so on.

The Gestalt Aether Theory states that the electron is a charged particle as such nothing could be more natural than that it emits or absorbs pulses of electrical energy to mediate its energy levels. To understand how the electron emits bursts or pulses of electrical energy to construct a photon see the image below:

A natural result of the bands of electrical energy

emitted by the electron is that polarization will take place with the first bursts of energy being stronger or more powerful, than later ones, this results in a di-pole solenoidal formation that is electrically neutral. Apart from this structure

the fact that the bands of energy emitted by the electron are separated by a di-electric means that these bands of energy can act as a capacitor and preserve the energy (identity) of the photon almost indefinitely. Look at the picture below to get an idea of how polarisation, the di-pole solenoid formation and the capacitor like formation may look like in a photon.:

Thus there now emerges a model of the photon that possesses a structure

that

1. Has no mass.

2. Is electrically neutral.

3. Can preserve its energy (identity) almost indefinitely

4. Always travels at c.

5. Is both wave and particle simultaneously.

6. Is easily emitted and absorbed by electrons.

7. Follows the inverse square law of dispersion.

8. Consists of all electromagnetic radiation from radio-waves with a wavelength of 5000 Km. to photons with a wavelength of a few nanometers.

Looking at the model of the photon given above, it becomes apparent that this is a model of the photon that fulfills all of the properties that a photon is supposed to possess. Readers please take note the structure of the photon is something that quantum mechanics has never attempted or bothered to investigate. Instead they came up with the extremely questionable (both on logical and on ethical grounds) concept of wave-particle duality, which is manipulated in such a way that it is not necessary to explain any phenomena, all that is necessary is to know that a photon will be either a particle or a wave as need arises.

Einstein on the other hand took this lack of an explanation as an opportunity to advance the fantastical postulate on the constancy of the speed of light. For those who would like to learn more about Gestalt Aether Theory my book: A Gestalt Aether Theory on the Nature of Light and Related Phenomena is available on Amazon.

Who really cares what Nicola Tesla thought of Einstein? Einstein’s theories have stood the test of time.

The problem with this misunderstood genius mantle that is afforded to Tesla is that, while he was a genius, his genius lay in a different area to that of Einstein. Both of these men went off on strange tangents in later life. Einstein spent much of his later life searching for a better theory than quantum mechanics. Tesla was inventing death rays and solving the world’s energy crisis… Both had entrenched views on reality that haven’t stood the test of time.

It’s not even clear that Tesla actually understood Einstein’s general relativity. Not many physicists could at that time, because it introduced a new form of mathematics that had never been used in physics before. I suspect many scientists proclaimed the theory wrong at the time rather than admit they didn’t really understand it.

Both the theories of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have stood the test of time. Both are renowned for their astonishingly accurate predictions. As such they are considered to be good theories. What more do you want from a theory? They are tools through which we can understand observations and predict outcomes.

No theory can be proven to be correct. At best they can be consistent with observation and used to make predictions. As such we can design useful things based on these theories and improve all our lives through advanced technologies rooted at the most fundamental level in advanced understanding gained from these theories.

A theory is like a fuel for your car. You could run the standard 88 octane fuel and everything works perfectly. However you can move to 95 octane and get slightly better performance. Any new theory beyond Relativity and Quantum Mechanics will just be like running higher octane fuel in your car: Most things will work the same, but there may be some improvements in certain areas.

Tesla was a genius in electrical engineering, not physics. Einstein was a genius in physics, not electrical engineering. Let us understand their human limitations.

Let Science and Engineering be guided and governed by logic rather than logicians.

It is rumored that when Einstein was asked how it felt to be the smartest man on Earth, he replied, “I wouldn’t know. Ask Nikola Tesla”. But that may have been sarcastic. Tesla wrote in 1935 when asked about Einstein’s theory of relativity:

"The theory, wraps all these errors and fallacies and clothes them in magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king. Its exponents are very brilliant men, but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists. Not a single one of the relativity propositions has been proved."

This just goes to prove the saying that new ideas don’t win converts; it’s just that the people who held the old ideas die off.

I think it is instructive just to see that a truly brilliant man like Tesla could be frustrated with the language and presentation of another brilliant man like Einstein, and lash out in angry denial. We see that happen all the time on Quora whenever anyone says “curved spacetime is nonsense!” I think it is human nature that when we are presented with arguments that we are unable to understand (and much of the blame for that is often on the person explaining the argument), we get angry and assume that the argument has no valid basis. Since, after all, if it were valid, we could understand it, or so we reason. Even Tesla appears to have been subject to this human flaw.