Alice Drinkwater reflects on the story of Eunice Newton Foote, the unrecognised climate change pioneer who did not have the right to vote, let alone an equal voice to male scientists at the time of her discoveries in the 1850s.
Although climate change feels like a modern issue, the heating power of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere was first demonstrated (and its future impacts predicted) by a female amateur scientist as early as the 1850s. Her research was ignored and rejected, but time is seeing her vindicated.
Eunice Newton Foote was born as Eunice Newton in 1819 in Connecticut, USA. Her father Isaac was a farmer and a distant relative of Isaac Newton, and her mother Thirza a homemaker. Both strongly believed in the importance of educating their children regardless of gender.
At the time, expectations were rigid around a woman’s behaviour in society. An influential factor on Eunice’s growth (both intellectual and social) was her education – she was encouraged by her teachers at Troy Female Seminary to pursue science, attending biology and chemistry lectures at her local college. Eunice stayed up to date with scientific literature and performed amateur experiments throughout her life. She married Elisha Foote, a judge, in 1841. The two seem to have been a good match – he too was an amateur scientist and inventor.
Women were expected to defer all civil rights to their husbands
In the 1840s, women were legally considered inferior to men, with no voting rights, limited property rights and little access to further education. When married, women were expected to defer all civil rights to their husbands. Eunice’s ambitions did not align with this situation, and she became heavily involved in the women’s rights movement.
Eunice and her husband were present at the first women’s rights convention – the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York State. Eunice was part of the committee responsible for writing up the proceedings of the convention. Both Footes signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which demanded equal legal rights for women, including the right to the vote – Eunice was the fifth signatory, reflecting the importance of her contributions.
Even while campaigning for gender equality, Eunice had begun her pioneering experimentation. During her life, the industrial revolution was in full swing. CO2 levels were 33% lower and the global average temperature was 1.5 degrees colder than today. Joseph Fourier had postulated in the 1820s that the atmosphere acted as an insulator, paving the way for what we now know as the greenhouse effect. However, it was not known which gases were responsible.
Eunice’s 1856 experiments concerned the heating properties of different gases. She used two glass jars with thermometers, balanced to the same temperature. Each cylinder was filled with a different gas (carbon dioxide, hydrogen and air), and exposed to sunlight. Eunice then examined which gas kept its glass jar warmest as it was heated, and which gas retained its temperature best.
The result of her experiments showed that carbon dioxide was highly effective at capturing heat, and could potentially lead to global warming.
‘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… must have necessarily resulted’.
Eunice Foote, 1856
Her conclusions were presented at the 1858 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, and later published in the American Journal of Science and Arts. This publication was the first mention in print that increased levels of carbon dioxide would result in global warming.
However, Eunice did not present her own findings at the AAAS meeting, despite women being allowed to speak at the event. Instead, Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institute spoke for her, prefacing by saying: “Science is of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true”.
Henry’s statement, though perhaps well-intentioned, gives an idea as to why she may not have felt comfortable – women at these conferences were treated as curios, rather than peers. Newspaper coverage of such meetings, while discussing science presented, often commented on the beauty of the scientists’ wives attending. The AAAS in their conference summary made no mention of Eunice’s work.
If her peers had listened and taken women like Eunice’s results seriously, where might our understanding of climate change be?
Eunice did not receive much recognition overall. Her paper was referenced in a Scientific American piece titled ‘Scientific ladies – experiments with condensed gases’. Her work was praised, although the author spelt her name incorrectly. She received some international interest, with summaries of her work featuring in journals of Jahresbericht (German Mathematical Society) and the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. However, these articles ignored her conclusions on the potential impact of carbon dioxide on temperature – worse, the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal listed her husband as the author.
Three years after Eunice’s experiments, John Tyndall performed research on ‘terrestrial radiation’, determining what gases were responsible for the atmosphere absorbing heat. His subsequent results are commonly regarded as the foundation of climate change science. Tyndall had the funds and support (as a Professor at the Royal Institution) to use state-of-the art machinery to perform experiments using infrared radiation on multiple greenhouse gases, under controlled conditions.
Eunice’s experiments were by comparison limited – she did not have the capacity to experiment specifically with IR radiation, or control factors such as pressure in the jars. Bearing in mind her position in society and experimental limitations, her achievement and prophetic conclusions remain impactful. Tyndall did not cite Eunice’s paper in his work, despite being a keen reader of multiple journals. It is not known whether he was aware of her.
So why did Eunice’s work not have the impact it may have warranted? She was certainly hampered by her society being unwilling to recognise a female voice. Furthermore, the burgeoning academic community in the USA was poorly connected at the time, so her results were less likely to reach both a domestic and international audience. Those who had the opportunity to champion her work (such as her friend Joseph Henry) did not, perhaps not having the foresight to understand the potential of her findings.
Her story shows that you don’t need sophisticated equipment to make a real contribution to science
If her peers had listened and taken women like Eunice’s results seriously, where might our understanding of climate change be? With support, Eunice may have brought results to the community even earlier. With the prospect of increasing the number of people involved in the climate change discourse, it is not a great leap to suggest there may have been a chance for us to pre-empt climate change and limit greenhouse gas emissions at an earlier stage.
But these are theoretical questions; Eunice died in 1888 without ever truly knowing the power of her words, nor how insightful they would prove to be. Her legacy did live on in her two daughters: Mary would go on to be a social activist; Augusta, a prominent marine biologist. Twenty years after her death, CO2 levels exceeded 300 ppm for the first time, and would never reduce below this.
When considering the story of Eunice, one can’t help but think of the millions of women who were ignored, even persecuted for wanting to pursue science. She was relatively lucky to be in a position where she could perform experiments and be published.
The minds and abilities that have been repressed over the years, for reasons of gender, race and economic situation, have undoubtedly set back our understanding of science, in all fields. Her story shows that you don’t need sophisticated equipment to make a real contribution to science; that we can all have something to bring.
Had Eunice been born today, there is no doubt that she would be a climate physicist and a proud feminist. All scientists should be forever grateful to women like Eunice for their determination in laying out a pathway to follow. There is still work to be done, but it is because of the brave women of the past that we can enjoy the freedoms that we have today. We all owe them so much.
Alice Drinkwater (she/her) is a 4th year PhD student in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, studying greenhouse gas metrology.
