A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct.

He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, designed by his company and built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York.

[6] He was a descendant of Marguerite Frédérique (née Lideriz) and Jean-René Bönickhausen, who had emigrated from the German town of Marmagen and settled in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century.

[8] Eiffel was not a studious child, and thought his classes at the Lycée Royal in Dijon boring and a waste of time, although in his last two years, influenced by his teachers for history and literature, he began to study seriously, and he gained his baccalauréats in humanities and science.

[11] After graduation, Eiffel had hoped to find work in his uncle's workshop in Dijon, but a family dispute made this impossible.

Eiffel was initially given the responsibility of assembling the metalwork and eventually took over the management of the entire project from Nepveu, who resigned in March 1860.

[15] His first important commission was for two viaducts for the railway line between Lyon and Bordeaux, and the company also began to undertake work in other countries, including St. Mark's Cathedral in Arica, Peru, which was an all-metal prefabricated building, manufactured in France and shipped to South America in pieces to be assembled on site; first it was intended for the city of Ancón, a beach near Lima, but the Peruvian Government of President José Balta changed the final destination to Arica because the old church was destroyed by an earthquake on 13 August 1868.

On 6 October 1868 he entered into partnership with Théophile Seyrig, a fellow graduate of the École Centrale, forming the company Eiffel et Cie.

[20] To assist him in the work he took on several people who were to play important roles in the design and construction of the Eiffel Tower, including Maurice Koechlin, a young graduate of the Zurich Polytechnikum, who was engaged to undertake calculations and make drawings, and Émile Nouguier, who had previously worked for Eiffel on the construction of the Douro bridge.

The same year Eiffel started work on a system of standardised prefabricated bridges, an idea that was the result of a conversation with the governor of Cochin-China.

Eiffel devised a structure consisting of a four legged pylon to support the copper sheeting which made up the body of the statue.

The dome, with a diameter of 22.4 m (73 ft), was the largest in the world when built and used an ingenious bearing device: rather than running on wheels or rollers, it was supported by a ring-shaped hollow girder floating in a circular trough containing a solution of magnesium chloride in water.

The design of the Eiffel Tower was originated by Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, who had discussed ideas for a centrepiece for the 1889 Exposition Universelle.

In May 1884 Koechlin, working at his home, made an outline drawing of their scheme, described by him as "a great pylon, consisting of four lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming together at the top, joined together by metal trusses at regular intervals".

[23] Initially Eiffel showed little enthusiasm, although he did sanction further study of the project, and the two engineers then asked Stephen Sauvestre to add architectural embellishments.

The enhanced idea gained Eiffel's support for the project, and he bought the rights to the patent on the design which Koechlin, Nougier and Sauvestre had taken out.

"Little happened until the beginning of 1886, but with the re-election of Jules Grévy as president and his appointment of Edouard Lockroy as Minister for Trade decisions began to be made.

This was signed by Eiffel acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative of his company, and granted him one and a half million francs toward the construction costs.

Just as work began at the Champ de Mars, the "Committee of Three Hundred" (one member for each metre of the tower's height) was formed, led by Charles Garnier and including some of the most important figures of the French arts establishment, including Adolphe Bouguereau, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet: a petition was sent to Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, the Minister of Works, and was published by Le Temps.

[26] "To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.

Eiffel had calculated that this would be satisfactory until they approached halfway to the first level: accordingly work was stopped for the purpose of erecting a wooden supporting scaffold.

Since the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent was made by foot, and took over an hour, Eiffel frequently stopping to make explanations of various features.

On 9 February 1893, Eiffel was found guilty on the charge of misuse of funds and was fined 20,000 francs and sentenced to two years in prison,[33] although he was acquitted on appeal.

Shortly before the trial, Eiffel had announced his intention to resign from the Board of Directors of the Compagnie des Etablissements Eiffel and did so at a General Meeting held on 14 February, saying, "I have absolutely decided to abstain from any participation in any manufacturing business from now on, and so that no one can be misled and to make it most evident I intend to remain uninvolved with the establishments that bears my name, and insist that it be removed from the company's name.

The wind tunnel was used to investigate the characteristics of the airfoil sections used by the early pioneers of aviation such as the Wright Brothers, Gabriel Voisin and Louis Blériot.

They have given engineers the data for designing and constructing flying machines upon sound, scientific principlesEiffel had meteorological measuring equipment placed on the tower in 1889, and also built a weather station at his house in Sèvres.

The growth of the railway network had an immense effect on people's lives, but although the enormous number of bridges and other work undertaken by Eiffel were an important part of this, the two works that did most to make him famous are the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, both projects of immense symbolic importance and today internationally recognized landmarks.

A proposal to demolish the railway bridge of Bordeaux (also known as the "passerelle St Jean"), the first major work of Gustave Eiffel, resulted in a large response from the public.