Gustave Eiffel

Gustave Eiffel (15 December 1832 to 27 December 1923) was a French civil engineer and entrepreneur whose company, the Compagnie des Etablissements Eiffel, built the tower in Paris that carries his name for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The tower's original design is credited to two of his engineers, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, with decorative arches added by the architect Stephen Sauvestre; Eiffel bought the rights to their patent and built the structure under his own name and at his own commercial risk. Earlier in his career Eiffel devised the internal iron pylon that supports the copper skin of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, and his firm built numerous railway bridges across Europe, including the Garabit Viaduct. In 1893 Eiffel was found guilty of misuse of funds in the Panama Canal financial scandal and fined, a conviction later overturned on appeal; he spent his later years working on aerodynamics and meteorology, including wind tunnel experiments conducted from the tower itself.