03/11/2025
In a quiet home in Seneca Falls, New York, a woman named Eunice Foote stood by her window, sunlight streaming through glass tubes on her table.
She wasn’t a university scientist. She had no lab coat, no funding, no degree — only curiosity, courage, and glass cylinders filled with air, water v***r, and carbon dioxide.
Her experiment was simple but revolutionary: she placed each tube in sunlight and measured how long the gas inside retained heat.
When she tested carbon dioxide, she made a discovery that would echo for centuries — it trapped heat far longer than ordinary air.
Foote concluded that if the Earth’s atmosphere contained more CO₂, the planet would grow warmer.
She had just uncovered the foundation of the greenhouse effect — the very mechanism behind today’s climate crisis.
But when she submitted her paper to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, women weren’t allowed to present.
So a man — Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian — read her findings aloud.
Her discovery received polite applause, then silence.
Three years later, a British physicist named John Tyndall performed similar experiments with more advanced instruments. His work was praised. His name went down in history.
Hers disappeared.
For over a century, Eunice Foote’s contribution was forgotten — until 2010, when a geologist rediscovered her paper and set the record straight.
Today, as the world confronts rising temperatures and melting ice, her 1856 insight feels prophetic.
Eunice Foote proved that brilliance doesn’t require permission — only persistence.
She saw the future from her own parlor, and though the world ignored her voice, the science spoke for itself.
~Old Photo Club
