There is probably no contemporary figure more baffling—and polarizing—than Elon Musk. Alongside his outsize entrepreneurial ventures—Tesla and SpaceX, among them—there is his public persona: charming, puckish, combative, mercurial. He has aroused admiration and scorn in about equal measure. What are we to make of him?

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The P4 laboratory, on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)