There's actually a bit of uncertainty as to Lincoln's descendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Lincoln_BeckwithS_Parc wrote:Abraham Lincoln, the most venerated president in US history, has no living direct descendents today. They'd all past away, the last one some 30 years ago. But yet, Lincoln's remembered for his actions and is thus, immortal in the annals of American history. No one seems to have cared about his descendants very much.
One Timothy Lincoln Beckwith, born in 1968, could potentially be a remaining heir.
Tesla is an awesome guy no matter what. Based on what I read about the man he probably had a very low sex drive and was driven more by his scientific ambitions. He did however expressed his doubts over never getting married, near the end of his life:S_Parc wrote:Nikola Tesla also had no children but yet, he's the most venerated inventor of the prior century. Much of the modern age of electronics owes him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Te ... ationships
..toward the end of his life, he told a reporter, "Sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work ..."
That makes it sound a bit as if Tesla, a man capable of forming good friendships with a wide variety of interesting people, would have liked some companionship in his life but for whatever reasons was so focused on his work that he never got around to finding someone. As both Einstein and Edison were married, (as was Lincoln, for that matter) I doubt it would have made him any less of a great scientist.
Marcus Aurelius' bloodline, however, lives on as he had eleven children in total. Several of his descendants were ultimately killed by Commodus but brutal as his reign may have been, it could not wipe out the genetic lineage of emperor Marcus Aurelius. As several of his other children and grandchildren married into Rome's most prominent noble families it is safe to say his bloodline likely exists to this very day, although the family ultimately lost its prominent place in history and sunk into obscurity in the decades and centuries that followed. The male line probably died out and with it the family name as I believe most grandchildren were from Aurelius' daughters.S_Parc wrote:Marcus Aurelius, the last great Roman Emperor (of the Pax Romana era) had a child and made him successor whereas the four emperors before him, appointed the most capable leader of his time period, as Imperial successor. The end result ... a revolution, as the son, Commodus, was an idiot. The first decline of the empire had commenced forward.
A better example would have been Julius Caesar, who's only daughter died in childbirth and who's son with Cleopatra was murdered as a teenager. His legitimate bloodline was therefore wiped out soon after his death, although he is known to have slept around famously much and fathered several bastard children among one the father (or grandfather?) of a future Gaul general.
Wolfgang Amadeus would be the best example, as of his six children only two sons survived adulthood and neither of them ever married or had any children, to my knowledge.
Mozart, Caesar and Marcus Aurelius all married however and Mozart is the only one who's bloodline definitely ended with him (although once more, as he was quite a charming man and the morals around the court were quite loose those days, chances are even "Rock Me Amadeus" had some affairs and who knows?).
None of them but Tesla, however, died alone or without ever finding a companion in their lives. And all were driven by their instincts to reproduce, and did exactly that. That their children were less fertile was not something they had a lot of control over, though it no doubt must be hard living in the shadow of a great man for these poor sons.
So yeah, of your examples only one we know for sure has no living descendants, and only one died unmarried but he regretted it eventually. All of them, one way or another, craved human contact and companionship.