Eunice Newton Foote

Scientist who first theorized the greenhouse effect, predating mainstream climate science by decades.

Eunice Newton Foote (1819–1888) was an American scientist and women’s rights advocate whose 1856 experiments revealed the greenhouse effect, making her a forgotten pioneer of climate science. Using glass cylinders and thermometers, she demonstrated that carbon dioxide traps heat and hypothesized that atmospheric CO2 could influence Earth’s temperature.

Foote’s paper, Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays, was presented at the 1856 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting—but a male colleague read it aloud, as women were barred from presenting. Her work was overlooked until rediscovered in 2011, decades after Svante Arrhenius’s 1896 greenhouse gas calculations.

A signatory of the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration, Foote blended scientific curiosity with activism. Her dual legacy in climate science and gender equality underscores her groundbreaking role in fields dominated by men. Today, she is celebrated as a trailblazer whose insights foreshadowed modern environmental challenges.