The female scientist who predicted global warming...in 1856
Let's remember Eunice Newton Foote
Hello Subscribers old and new! In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, I’m resharing this post originally published in 2024 on Eunice Newton Foote, the scientist who first discovered the greenhouse gas effect and predicted global warming.
Last July, I was in Seneca Falls for some big anniversaries—175 years since Elizabeth Cady Stanton called for the vote there, and 100 years since Alice Paul unveiled the Equal Rights Amendment. It was also the hottest summer on record. Seneca Falls was the sadly perfect place to be for that moment because it was the home of Eunice Newton Foote who, in 1856, discovered the greenhouse effect and predicted global warming.
Yes, we’ve known about the greenhouse effect and it’s likely effects on the earth’s temperature since the 1850s. Thanks to the work of a woman.
Eunice Newton was born in 1819 and was raised in New York, which back then was a hotbed of activism. She attended the Troy Female Seminary, one of the few schools for girls (Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an alum!) and the Rensselaer School which taught scientific theory and provided time for experimentation in the laboratory. Hardly the conventional Finishing School subjects.
In 1841 Eunice married Elisha Foote Jr. She soon became a mother to two daughters, Mary and Augusta. As a housewife and mother in the 1800s, she would have been madly busy keeping everyone clean, clothed and fed (shout out to the help she undoubtably had) and yet she was able to set up a laboratory at home and conduct her experiments.
One of which examined the effect of sunlight on different gases, concluding carbon dioxide from which she concluded:
An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; and if, as some suppose, at one period of its history, the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action, as well as from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted.
This was a warning about climate change.
The paper she wrote based on her experiments, "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays,” was presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1856.
She did not present it herself, probably because the stigma against women speaking in public then. Or maybe she was just shy. The man who did present it began by saying a few words to recognize that he was presenting the work of a woman: “Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true.” However, the presentation or the work didn’t make it into the conference proceedings.
(Aside: This reminds me of The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan)
Later, the man presenting her work wrote, “Although the experiments were interesting and valuable, there were [many difficulties] encompassing [any] attempt to interpret their significance.”
A shorter version of her paper was also published, in her name, in the American Journal of Arts and Science and it was the first known physics publication by a woman. Also in that issue: an article by John Tyndall, an Englishman who would later go on to conduct experiments that validated her work and which earned him the name the “father of the greenhouse effect.”
This is the Matilda Effect in action.
It’s unclear if he was aware of her work and it’s the subject of some debate. His papers don’t mention her work—though an article of his appeared in the same journal as hers, so perhaps he read it? The letters and papers of other European scientists don’t mention her either, probably because they didn’t think much of “amateur American scientists” like Eunice. And that is another reason Eunice Newton Foote’s work was forgotten until it was rediscovered in 2010.
Eunice didn’t just do this one experiment. She studied static electricity and published papers on that as well. She was a prolific inventor, along with her husband, who took out a patent in his name for a thermostatically controller cooking stove that she invented. She also patented her invention for a rubberized shoe insert to prevent squeaking shoes and a paper-making machine.
She was supported in all this by her husband, Elisha. Not just financially supported, either. They were collaborators. He encouraged her.
She was also involved in the women’s rights movement—after all, Eunice was friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and in fact may have lived in the house Elizabeth called “the center of the rebellion” before the Stantons. They attended the same school. Eunice and her husband attended the Seneca Falls convention and proudly signed The Declaration of Sentiments when it was presented.
I love when I’m researching historical women and discover that they didn’t exist in a vacuum. There wasn’t just one notable woman in any given town…there were at least two! And they were friendly! More than anything, seeing women on the pages of each other’s biographies and stories gave me a new sense that the way we talk about historical women—as a token extraordinary woman here or there—does a disservice to them and to us. There were many of them and they were connected. They supported and encouraged each other, if only by just existing and showing there’s another way for women to be.
Why did the world forget about Eunice?
In an 1868 issue of her newspaper The Revolution, Elizabeth Cady Stanton tells of a visit with Eunice at the Patent Office. Elizabeth has gone there to prove wrong some man’s recent assertion that women never invented anything. She writes, “Mrs. Foote remarked to us that she had no doubt that half the patents there were the inventions of women; but as men had the money to get up the models and loved notoriety, they had been taken out in their names.”
Men had the money because, in part, anything the women might have earned would have gone to their husbands. Even if she had the money to get up the models, a married woman wouldn’t have been able to sign the necessary contracts. Others have pointed out that a married woman would not have been able to defend her work in court, because legally she did not exist. Furthermore, a woman engaged in “industry” let alone a lawsuit for money for her work would have been socially ruined.
But women probably just wanted to get the job done, so they did whatever “work arounds” were necessary. Like getting a patent in a man’s name. Or having a man present the paper on their scientific work.
And this is how women get erased from history.
By stupid laws, silence and snobbery, and double standards.
And now the world is hotter than ever.
What if we listened to women?
What if we did ...? Listen to women. What a great question. The thing is, though, we have to start at home in our own bathroom mirrors. It's taken me years to learn to both listen to my own wisdom and act upon it. Every time I do, something works out. Every time I don't, I make more work for myself. The more of us who listen within and act on it, the faster the world will listen to women. Maya, again, thank you! I'd never ever heard of Eunice.
This story reminds me of how, for years, Rosalind Franklin's work on DNA went uncredited.