Short answers, pulled from the story.
Lorenzo Ghiberti was born in 1378 in Pelago, a small town located twenty kilometers from Florence. His parentage remains uncertain because his mother Fiore lived with a goldsmith named Bartolo di Michele after leaving her husband Cione.
In 1401 the Arte di Calimala guild announced a competition to design bronze doors for the north side of the Baptistery. Seven semifinalists were selected including Filippo Brunelleschi and Simone da Colle before only Ghiberti and Brunelleschi remained as finalists by 1402.
Ghiberti spent twenty-one years creating the first set of bronze doors for the Baptistery. The completed doors consisted of twenty-eight gilded bronze panels depicting scenes from the New Testament and were installed on the east side of the Baptistery on the 19th of April 1424.
Michelangelo later called these doors the Gates of Paradise because he found them fit for heaven's entrance. Giorgio Vasari described them a century later as undeniably perfect masterpieces created in any age while Ghiberti himself stated they were the most singular work he ever made.
At age seventy-five he succumbed to an unknown fever on the 1st of December 1455. His body was buried in the Basilica di Santa Croce where his son Vittorio joined him years later.