Eiffel was born in 1832 and died in 1923. Eiffel was a talented and clever engineer who was most famous for his bridges and viaducts.

His family had German ancestors and they adopted the family name of Eiffel (which was that of their village of origin) as French people had trouble saying their real name which was "Bonnickhausen".

Gustave studied chemistry at university in Paris, but ended up working with a company that designed railway bridges. Because many of the senior engineers moved on to other companies, Eiffel soon found himself in charge of many of the projects building bridges, viaducts and other structures.

Eiffel soon founded his own construction company called Eiffel et Cie. He liked to work with new technology, which in his time involved using wrought iron. He worked together with a Belgian engineer called Téophile Seyrig on the 160 metre long bridge over the River Douro in Portugal. The bridge cleverly combined road and rail bridges in one. This construction was an important milestone for Eiffel because it explored new building techniques, showed that bridges could be built from relatively cheap materials and it was completed quickly in under two years.

Eiffel and his company soon became known as the experts in bridge building. His bridges did not require skilled workers to erect and were economic and safe.

Eiffel quickly became a well-known engineer who designed and completed many complex projects. He specialised in working in iron.

Some of his constructions included viaducts across valleys and gorges, bridges, the department store of Bon Marché in Paris, a bridge in Vietnam, churches and Budapest railway station. The viaduct of Garabit, for example, spanned a gorge and a river. Its length of 564 metres was quite exceptional for such a construction. Few people are aware of the variety of buildings that Eiffel and his company created.

In the 1870's America and France decided to create a special monument to celebrate the centenary of American independence in 1876. At that time, France had given considerable help towards the American colonists in their resistance against the British government. The Americans were to provide the pedestal and the French, the monument. The French sculptor Bartholdi had a grand vision of huge statue of a torch bearing woman who would represent Liberty.

The size of the statue created enormous problems in its construction. Eiffel was brought in to solve them because of his expertise in complex, giant size constructions. Eiffel designed the interior structures for the Statue of Liberty for the sculptor Bartholdi to work around. He constructed the iron scaffolding of the interior so that the sheets of copper could be attached to the gigantic framework.

The 1889 World Expo in Paris was held to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution in 1789. In 1884, it was decided to hold a competition to design an attraction which would bring more visitors to the World Expo. There were hundreds of entries, some of which - like a giant guillotine - were rather unusual. Eiffel et Cie's design of the Tower was the winning entry.

It took only about twenty-six months to construct the Tower. At that time, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in the world at 321 metres in height. (1051 feet) It weighed 7 000 tonnes and two and half million rivets were used in its construction.

The Eiffel Tower was to become Gustave's signature building and the one that means France for most people in the world. It was also his favourite construction. He even had a sitting room built for himself in it, where he worked every day right up to the time he died. The photo shows him (or at least a model of him!) in this room on the Tower.

However, to begin with, the Eiffel Tower was not at all popular with the people of Paris. They did not like its shape, they thought it looked ugly. Parisians sneered at the Tower.  Famous “savants” and artists of the day stated that it was unthinkable that a mere engineer, a maker of machines, could construct a work of art. They wanted to pull it down as soon as the World Expo had finished.

To their amazement, the Tower proved to be the most popular place in Paris to visit. When World Expo had finished, people from all over the world were still coming to Paris, just to see the Eiffel Tower. So the people of Paris decided that they would keep it.

Eiffel continued his work, and looked for ways of making the Tower a practical object as well as a tourist attraction. He used it for experiments in wind resistance and as a weather station. When radio broadcasting was invented, the Tower became a giant radio aerial!

Eiffel died at the age of 91 in 1923. Today, the Eiffel Tower is ranked as the number one tourist attraction in the world and the most recognizable monument.