Eunice Newton Foote

Was an early American scientist and inventor born on July 17, 1819. She was born in Connecticut and raised in New York. Foote conducted experiments on how gases trap heat from sunlight, which is a threat to climate change which we now call “the greenhouse effect" in the 1850s.

Her finding was the first known publication in a scientific journal by an American woman in the field of physics; however, they were not widely recognized at the time.

Three years later, John Tyndall conducted similar research and received greater credit.

Nevertheless, modern historians now acknowledge Foote’s earlier contribution. When Foote died in 1888 and almost after a hundred years of her unknown contribution, women academics rediscovered her findings in the twentieth century. 

Her work is especially relevant today, as climate science continues to address global warming.

Moreover, she was a women’s rights campaigner and attended the first women’s right convention, Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Foote was one of the five women who prepared on the preceding of the convention for publication.