Tesla was not a physicist and he was vaguely what we define today as an engineer. He was certainly interested in improving the quality of life of humanity. Edison screwed him, sure. But he didn’t advance physics to the degree of his contemporaries like Dirac, Maxwell, etc. His reputation today is hero-worship. Not a bad guy, but not a great guy.
As far as free-energy as many misguided new-agey folks define it, it does not exist because of the law of conservation of energy. One cannot draw energy from nothing. One can convert energy from a more-or-less “free” source like sunlight. Close enough.
