Google Doodle celebrates 204th birthday of Eunice Newton Foote

With an engaging slideshow on its homepage, Google Doodle honors the 204th birthday of Eunice Newton Foote, an American scientist and advocate for women’s rights. Foote, born in 1819 in Goshen, Connecticut, USA, achieved a noteworthy milestone in climate science by being the first to discover the greenhouse effect and its impact on the Earth’s warming.

Eunice Newton Foote’s Groundbreaking Experiment: Pioneering the Link Between Carbon Dioxide Levels and Atmospheric Warming

Eunice Newton Foote pioneered the correlation between rising carbon dioxide levels and the Earth’s atmospheric warming. In 1856, she conducted a groundbreaking experiment that significantly influenced our present understanding of climate change.
Her experiment involved placing different gases in cylinders and exposing them to sunlight for observation. Foote observed that carbon dioxide exhibited a greater increase in temperature compared to the other gases. From this, she deduced that carbon dioxide alone had the potential to alter the Earth’s temperature due to its pronounced heating effect.
Foote became the first scientist to uncover the connection between carbon dioxide levels and atmospheric warming.

Eunice Newton Foote: First woman in the United States having two physics studies

In 1857, Eunice Newton published her second research on atmospheric static electricity in the esteemed journal Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Subsequently, a male scientist presented Foote’s research findings at the annual meeting of the AAAS, which, in turn, paved the way for an experiment that revealed the profound understanding and importance of the ‘Greenhouse effect‘.

Eunice Newton Foote: A Dedicated Advocate for Women’s Rights and Science

Foote dedicated a significant portion of her life to advocating for women’s rights. She actively participated in the historic Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the inaugural Woman’s Rights Convention.
During a time when women encountered exclusion from the scientific community, Foote fearlessly persisted, conducting independent experiments.
Additionally, she played a crucial role by becoming the fifth signatory of the Declaration of Sentiments, a transformative document that called for gender equality in both social and legal spheres.