Eunice Foote: A Once Forgotten Climate Science Pioneer
                     EUNICE FOOTE: A ONCE FORGOTTEN 
CLIMATE SCIENCE PIONEER
INTRODUCTION
Until a decade ago, the science of climate 
change had as its founding father John 
Tyndall, the Irish physicist who in 1859 
demonstrated what we know today as the 
greenhouse effect, global warming due to 
the atmosphere. 
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HISTORY
In 2010, the curiosity of a retired geologist 
discovered that we had somehow left behind 
Eunice Newton Foote (17 July 1819 – 30 
September 1888), a pioneer of women’s 
rights who for a century and a half has been 
forgotten as the scientist who beat Tyndall 
by three years; the greenhouse effect had a 
founding mother before it had a founding 
father.
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WOMEN’S RIGHTS 
MOVEMENT
In the mid-19th century, the women’s rights 
movement was gaining momentum. 
In July 1848, the first convention was held in 
Seneca Falls, New York State, led by 
pioneering activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
and local Quaker women. 
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MANIFESTO FOR 
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
The result of that meeting was the 
Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto for 
women’s rights—including suffrage—which 
was signed by 68 “ladies” and 32 
“gentlemen”. 
Among the former were Stanton herself, her 
sister Harriet and other activists such as the 
Quaker sisters Lucretia Coffin Mott and 
Martha Coffin Wright. 
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MARRIAGE
Among the 68 women signatories was also the 
name of Eunice Newton Foote, a young woman 
born in Goshen, Connecticut, raised in 
Bloomfield, New York, who was married to judge 
and mathematician Elisha Foote, had two 
daughters named Mary and Augusta, and was a 
friend and neighbour of Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
in Seneca Falls. 
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EUNICE NEWTON FOOTE 
CONTRIBUTION
Like the other 99 signatories, Eunice Foote 
deserves to be remembered for having been 
instrumental in advancing a cause so necessary 
for social progress at a time when the struggle 
for women’s equality was seen as an 
extravagance, a danger, or merely a waste of 
time.
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A DESCENDANT OF NEWTON 
AND PIONEER OF 
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
But in other respects, Eunice Foote would remain 
a footnote in the history books. That notation 
would say that she was also a science-loving 
woman; her surname is no coincidence, as her 
father was apparently a distant relative of Sir 
Isaac Newton, and in fact bore the same first 
name as him.
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INVENTION
Among Eunice’s influences was Amos Eaton, who 
is credited with introducing higher education in 
science in the USA. Trained in science but 
without a university degree—which at the time 
was an avenue generally closed to women—
Eunice spent part of her time experimenting, 
publishing the first two physics studies by a 
woman in the US, and dreaming up inventions 
such as a filling for the soles of shoes and boots 
to prevent squeaking when walking.
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EUNICE NEWTON 
FOOTE’S FIRST PAPER
Retired geologist Raymond Sorenson, a keen 
collector of old technical books, which he stored 
in his basement in Oklahoma, was reading a copy 
of the 1857 edition of the Annual Scientific 
Discovery, edited by engineer David A. Wells. 
There he found Eunice Newton Foote’s first 
paper, published the previous year in The 
American Journal of Science and Arts and 
curiously preceded by one by her own husband. 
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THE FIRST RELATIONSHIP 
BETWEEN CO2 AND THE 
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
The mechanisms that might explain her results 
have been discussed, and how they were 
possibly a chance finding that was 
misinterpreted but from which she drew a 
visionary interpretation; what is undeniable 
today is that Eunice Foote was the first scientist 
to establish the connection between the level of 
CO2 and the warming of the atmosphere.
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