On the Eiffel Tower, 72 names of French male scientists, engineers, and mathematicians appear in raised lettering in recognition of their contributions. Gustave Eiffel chose this "invocation of science" because of his concern over the protests against the tower, and chose names of those who had distinguished themselves since 1789. The engravings are found on the sides of the tower under the first balcony, in letters about 60 cm (24 in) tall, and were originally painted in gold. The engraving was painted over at the beginning of the 20th century and restored in 1986–87 by Société Nouvelle d'exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the company that the city of Paris contracts to operate the Tower. The repainting of 2010–11 restored the letters to their original gold colour. There are also names of the engineers who helped build the Tower and design its architecture on a plaque on the top of the Tower, where a laboratory was built as well. It has been proposed to add the names of 72 leading women to the tower and a list for agreement with the Mayor of Paris was presented in 2026.
List
Location The list is split in four parts (one for each side of the tower). The sides have been named after the parts of Paris that each side faces:
The North-East side (also known as La Bourdonnais side)
The South-East side (also known as the Military School side)
The South-West side (also known as the Grenelle side)
The North West side (also known as the Trocadéro side)
Names In the table below are all the names on the four sides.
Criticism
Women
The list contains no women. The list has been particularly criticized for excluding the name of Sophie Germain, a noted French mathematician whose work on the theory of elasticity was used in the construction of the tower itself. In 1913, John Augustine Zahm suggested that Germain was excluded because she was a woman. An Eiffel Tower tour guide, Benjamin Rigaud, would point out to visitors the 72 names of scientists on the tower, but he was surprised to find that there were no women included. He noticed that there were 40 spaces on the tower's second floor and this matched the number of women identified in a Femmes et Sciences document. This led to the idea of a project, to include the missing women, which was named after Hypatia, the fourth century CE Alexandrian mathematician. The idea was taken up by Nathalie Drach-Temam, President of Sorbonne University. It was decided that only those women scientists who had an association with France should be considered. Rigaud was keen to see scientists who had lived and worked in France included, such as Japanese physicist Toshiko Yuasa, Senegalese-born computer scientist Rose Dieng-Kuntz, and Tunisian-born engineer Radhia Cousot. In 2025, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo named a commission of experts to consider the project. The commission's report was positive and advocated inscribing the names of 72 female scientists adjacent to those of the 72 male scientists, to reflect full equality. The Association Femmes & Sciences was tasked with preparing a list of women scientists to be commemorated. In January 2026, the Association unveiled a proposed list of late 72 women scientists from 1789 to the present. In 2026, the list was awaiting acceptance by the mayor, the Académie des Sciences, the Académie des Technologies and the Académie nationale de médecine. The suggested women are Denise Albe-Fessard, Yvette Amice, Jeanne Baret, Denise Barthomeuf, Madeleine Brès, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, Simonne Caillère, Yvette Cauchois, Edmée Chandon, Marthe Condat, Anita Conti, Eugénie Cotton, Radhia Cousot, Odile Croissant, Marie Curie, Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke, Henriette Delamarre, Georgette Délibrias, Nathalie Demassieux, Rose Dieng, Angélique du Coudray, Louise du Pierry, Henriette Mathieu-Faraggi, Jacqueline Ferrand, Jacqueline Ficini, Rosalind Franklin, Marthe Gautier, Sophie Germain, Jeanne Guiot, Geneviève Guitel, Sébastienne Guyot, Claudine Hermann, Andrée Hoppilliard, Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin, Irène Joliot-Curie, Geneviève Jourdain, Dorothéa Klumpke, Lydie Koch-Miramond, Colette Kreder, Nicole Laroche, Cornélie Lebon-de Brambilla, Yolande Le Calvez, Paulette Libermann, Marianne Grunberg-Manago, Nicole Mangin, Cécile Morette, Édith Mourier, Ethel Moustacchi, Suzanne Noël, Yvonne Odic, Isabelle Olivieri, Marie-Louise Paris, Marguerite Perey, Claudine Picardet, Alberte Pullman, Pauline Ramart, Lucie Randoin, Alice Recoque, Michelle Schatzman, Anne-Marcelle Schrameck, Marie-Hélène Schwartz, Josiane Serre, Alice Sollier, Hélène Sparrow, Bianca Tchoubar, Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat, Thérèse Tréfouël, Agnès Ullmann, Arlette Vassy, Suzanne Veil, Jeanne Villepreux and Toshiko Yuasa. The names were chosen based on a number of criteria. They had to have lived after 1789, which excluded the leading chemists Marie Meurdrac and Émilie du Châtelet. They could not have a name that was already on the tower, so this excluded Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, whose first husband Antoine Lavoisier's name is one of the original men of science. Additionally, their name could not be too long, like Marie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville. Rosalind Franklin was allowed exceptionally because of her association with France as the criteria had been that they should all be French.
Hydraulic engineers and scholars Eiffel acknowledged most of the leading French scientists in the field of hydraulic engineering; fourteen of them are listed on the Eiffel Tower. Among those missing are Henri Philibert Gaspard Darcy, whose work did not come into wide use until the 20th century, Antoine Chézy, and Joseph Valentin Boussinesq, who was early in his career at the time. The renowned mathematician Évariste Galois is also absent from the list, as are Joseph Liouville and Charles Hermite, two other famous French mathematicians.
See also List of women's names for the Eiffel Tower
Notes
References
Further reading Barral, Georges (1892). Le Panthéon scientifique de la tour Eiffel: histoire des origines de la construction de la Tour (in French). Savine. Reprinted as Barral, Georges (2013). Le Panthéon scientifique de la tour Eiffel: histoire des origines de la construction de la Tour (in French). Hachette Livre. ISBN 978-2-01-285936-4.
External links
Media related to 72 names on the Eiffel Tower at Wikimedia Commons Paris streets named for the 72 scientists