As France pre­pares to host the Uni­ver­sal Exhi­bi­tion 2025, Frédéric Seitz, a DPLG qual­i­fied archi­tect, in his recent pub­li­ca­tion « Gus­tave Eif­fel, le tri­om­phe de l’ingénieur [Gus­tave Eif­fel or the tri­umph of engi­neers »], edit­ed by Armand Col­in, Paris reveals some of the less-well known facts about this most famous French engi­neer. Behind the image of a genius as a cre­ator, as a pro­mot­er of indus­tri­al tech­niques, the book retraces the track-record of a busi­ness­man with def­i­nite sci­en­tif­ic talents. 

What biog­ra­phy Frédéric Seitz offers here depicts a strong, com­plex per­son­al­i­ty whose best fea­tures are not nec­es­sar­i­ly tech­ni­cal. “The most strik­ing thing about Gus­tave Eif­fel is the capac­i­ty he dis­played to have the best spe­cial­ists in his ser­vice and to gal­va­nize the influ­en­tial peo­ple of his time, right from the start of his career”, notes our lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tist Seitz. He grad­u­at­ed from Ecole Cen­trale [one of the finest engi­neer­ing schools in France] in the elec­tive spe­cial­ty chem­istry which enabled him to plunge into mate­r­i­al sci­ences, which lat­er proved his strongest and most illus­tri­ous area.

“His pro­fes­sion­al path is aston­ish­ing­ly close to that of anoth­er Ecole Cen­trale grad­u­ate, Fran­cis Bouygues, who cre­at­ed a rein­forced con­crete com­pa­ny that has now grown into a diver­si­fied indus­tri­al empire, direct­ed today by his son Mar­tin” says Frédéric Seitz.

A talented opportunist

The Tow­er episode, so to speak, is the accom­plish­ment of a vir­tu­oso career in met­al con­struc­tions, and also reveals some aspects that are far-removed from the leg­endary Eif­fel. In the book, we dis­cov­er that Eif­fel in fact ‘devel­oped ideas’ pro­posed by oth­ers. “He allowed the engi­neers of his design office to work on the tow­er project. And when it was suf­fi­cient­ly advanced, he took over and part financed the con­struc­tion out of his pock­et, despite strong oppo­si­tion from Parisian intel­lec­tu­als and artists”, we learn. From this obsti­na­tion arose not only an excep­tion­al tech­ni­cal feat, but also a grand finan­cial suc­cess since the income from the entrance tick­ets quick­ly cov­ered the cost of build­ing the tow­er … The final chap­ters of the books look at the not well known sci­en­tif­ic career of Gus­tave Eif­fel in his late years. He was seri­ous­ly con­demned in what was known as the Pana­ma Canal scan­dal, and at which point Eif­fel aban­doned his enter­prise and con­cen­trat­ed on sci­en­tif­ic mat­ters and research activ­i­ties. “Towards the end of his life, Eif­fel con­duct­ed exper­i­ments in three areas: wire­less, mete­o­rol­o­gy and aero­dy­nam­ics. He was rec­og­nized for this work by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty at large. Some even say that he would have been one of the pio­neers of mod­ern avi­a­tion”, note his­to­ri­an Seitz.

In the 300 pages of his book, Seitz also touch­es on some more per­son­al aspects of the engi­neer Eif­fel, includ­ing the strange ‘fam­i­ly’ formed by Eif­fel, his daugh­ter and son-in-law, an engi­neer also who took over the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny. The book teach­es us that while Eif­fel enjoyed and led a flam­boy­ant pub­lic life, he man­aged to keep his pri­vate sphere in the dark and there­by con­tin­ue to rein­force his per­son­al myth.