Women’s Rights Activist and Scientist
Eunice Foote (1819-1888) was a women’s rights activist and scientist.
FAST FACTS:
- She is the first person to hypothesize the idea of global warming, yet her idea was nearly forgotten and never reappeared for years to come.
- In her most famous experiment, she filled two containers with air and a variety of substances and analyzed how their temperature would increase when left in the sunlight.
- She wrote about her results and procedure in the paper “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays.” Here, she concluded that “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”
- Her experiment and results were nearly stolen by a male scientist, like many other female scientists at the time. Joseph Henry was the first person to present the idea at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Later on, though, Foote presented the idea herself to other scientists.
To learn more about Eunice Foote, check out the links below: