Gustave Eiffel Gustave Eiffel Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (born Bonickhausen dit Eiffel; ; ; 15 December 183227 December 1923) was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, he made his name building various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel focused on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant contributions in both fields. Gustave Eiffel was born in Burgundy, France, in
Gustave Eiffel engineer to help him to realise the Statue of Liberty. Some work had already been carried out by Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc, but he had died in 1879. Eiffel was selected because of his experience with wind stresses. Eiffel devised a structure consisting of a four-legged pylon to support the copper sheeting which made up the body of the statue. The entire statue was erected at the Eiffel works in Paris before being dismantled and shipped to the United States. In 1886 Eiffel also designed the dome for the Astronomical Observatory in Nice. This was the most important building in a complex