Women of Science who are forgotten:
As I have said before here, I am a science geek and when I was in college I took every science class they offered, which also meant I had to take horrible math classes to be able to understand the information. I have always been interested in how things work and what makes things happen like they do.
One area that I find very interesting, even though it is sad that it exists, is the way women were swept under the carpet and received no recognition for their research and findings, even though later men claimed the fame for their discoveries. We talked about this briefly in the post Women in Science: the History of Erasure.
There is even a podcast called, "Lost Women of Science" that you might be interested to listen to.
Today, I was reading about Eunice Newton Foote(1819-1888) . She discovered that carbon dioxide and water vapor trapped more heat than the air, suggesting a link between these gases and temperature regulation on Earth. It is good to note here that on her father's side, she was a distant relative of the legendary British scientist-astronomer and alchemist Isaac Newton.
She conducted homespun experiments using 30-inch-long cylinders filled with different gases (moist air, dry air, carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen). Placed cylinders in the sun and charted how the gases warmed. She noted that the cylinder with carbon dioxide warmed the most and retained heat for a long time.This work laid the groundwork for what later became known as the greenhouse effect.
Her findings,"Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays," were presented at the 1856 American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. However, as a woman, she was not allowed to present her paper herself and it was read by a male colleague.
She presented her own research on static electricity in the following year's AAAS meeting and filed patents for several inventions, including a rubber sole for shoes and a paper-making machine.
Although her paper was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting on August 23, 1856.
Foote's work faded into obscurity, overshadowed by John Tyndall's later similar discoveries, 3 years later.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in her contributions to climate science. In the 1970s, female historians of science began recognizing Foote's contributions. Elizabeth Wagner Reed, in her 1992 book, highlighted Foote's demonstration of the greenhouse effect. In 2011, Ray Sorenson published a paper acknowledging Foote's role as a climate pioneer. A 2020 retrospective obituary in The New York Times praised her experiment as "ingenious."
Now, I understand that the times were very different in 1856, but there may have been even more at play here for her work to be shoved under the rug.
She was a known part of the "Women's Movement" in those times that marched in protest for women to have the right to vote. She was a close friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who formulated the agenda for woman’s rights that guided the struggle well into the 20th century. This could very well have played a major part in her obscurment. Both she and her husband attended the Seneca Falls Convention and signed the Declaration to establish women's rights. This could not have been overlooked in this period.
It is good, though, that 150 years later she is finally being vindicated and receiving the credit she deserves for her early work on climate change. Without her work, we might still be in the dark about all the effects climate change can cause. She deserves to be known and ranked high in the annals of science.
If this is of any interest to you, here are some resource articles to help you learn more about this time period for women scientists and particularly about Eunice:
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