Women of Science Lost In History #1

Eunice Newton Foote

When Margaret Rossiter asked, “Were there ever women scientists?” at an informal gathering consisting of her mostly male department professors and peers at Yale University, she received the answer “no” in a manner that heavily pronounced the underlying message “this [is] not an acceptable subject.” Even Marie Curie, the first woman to win not one, but two Nobel prizes in her short lifetime, had solely been recognized as her husband’s care-taker (1).

This notion led her to resurface the term ‘Matilda Effect’, initially established by suffragist and abolitionist, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898). The term describes a situation in which a female scientist who has made groundbreaking discoveries is overlooked and her accomplishments are credited to a man (2). A general approach to the issue of the underrepresentation of women in science is believing and advocating for the idea that there is no underrepresentation whatsoever and that it is rather due to a woman’s biology that she cannot decipher complex ideas or build the skills required for science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) careers.

Virginia Woolf took another approach, introducing the importance of opportunity while discussing the place of women in fiction. The general view in society is that it is a woman’s responsibility to have and raise children, which, according to Woolf, is not as easy as it seems, taking up a woman’s time and energy in its entirety. Woolf also invents a hypothetical woman, Judith Shakespeare, to act as the unfortunate sister of William Shakespeare. In her story, while William went to school and gained skills that he would need later in his life, his “extraordinarily gifted sister”, Judith, remained home to help their mother wash dishes and mend clothes. Before she was even seventeen, “she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring wool-stapler” (3). Consequently, like every woman she represents, Judith did not have the opportunity to build intellectual ability or improve herself and her skills. This lack of opportunity to foster certain skills also applies to the field of science where women cannot gather enough knowledge or awareness to save themselves from society’s grip. It’s no surprise that in the 19th century, and perhaps before, this may have been accurate, however, even in the 21st century, the increase in the number of women in STEM careers is not very optimistic; less than 30 percent of the researchers in these careers are women. Therefore this series, Women In Science Lost In History, aims to bring women who were buried and hidden under layers of male-dominated history back to the surface.

Eunice Newton Foote was one of the women lost to the traces of history. She was a scientist and a women’s rights campaigner born in 1819 in Connecticut. Foote was present at the first Women’s Rights Convention held in July of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. During the convention, the Declaration of Sentiments written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton was presented, demanding equality for women in social status and legal rights, including the right to vote. Foote’s name, along with her husband’s, is included in the list of signatures (see Figure 2).

Figure 1: Eunice Foote

Figure 2: Signature page of the Declaration of Sentiments, U.S. Library of Congress.

For her scientific research, she studied the Carboniferous geologic period of the Paleozoic era and later questioned the effect different gasses have on the heat from the sun rays by conducting an experiment. She placed a thermometer in two cylinders, removed the air from one cylinder and compressed it in the other using an air pump. After that, she let the cylinders reach the same temperature and then placed them under the sun. Once the cylinders were heated, she measured the temperature of each one under different moisture conditions with different gasses including hydrogen gas, nitrogen gas, oxygen gas and carbon dioxide (4). From her results, she concluded that moist conditions trapped the most heat and that the cylinder that held carbon dioxide had reached the highest temperature — once removed from the light, “it was many times as long in cooling.”

With the knowledge that she had gathered from studying the Paleozoic era, she also noted that “if, as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion” of carbon dioxide, then an increase in temperature “must necessarily have resulted.” She recorded these findings in her paper titled ‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays’ (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: “Circumstances affecting the heat of the Sun’s rays “, the American Journal of Science (1857).

While this may seem like a simple and rather obvious observation, it must be noted that this was concluded back in 1856 and with the lack of the technological advances humankind has acquired today, it was quite revolutionary. This can further be attributed to Foote’s ability to think ahead of her time, just as Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University climate scientist, recognized her accomplishments, saying that “the fact that she turned glass jars into an experiment on heat-trapping [gasses] is phenomenal.” (5).

Accompanied by her husband, Foote brought her paper to the eighth annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). As a women’s rights activist, she felt proud and honored to be included in the event. However, her feelings of pride and honor were short-lived, taking an abrupt turn towards disappointment and anger when she learned that she wasn’t even allowed to present her own paper. Instead, it had been presented by Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institute, shattering her hopes that her work would be recognized after seeing that her paper was barely mentioned in the Scientific American and not at all mentioned in the society’s official published record.

However, only three years later, in 1859, an Irish physicist, John Tyndall, published his own findings on the heat-trapping effect of certain gasses in his paper, “Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat Through Gaseous Bodies” where he explained how carbon dioxide and water vapor heated the planet (6). He shared, “With regard to the action of other gasses upon heat, we are not, so far as I am aware, possessed of a single experiment”. This quote single-handedly proves the overlooking of Foote’s experiment. Since Foote’s research was utterly ignored, Tyndall’s work was considered the foundation of modern climate science. Despite her efforts in achieving equality for women, Foote’s work still went unnoticed in the male-dominated field of science.

While one reason for her research going unnoticed may be the lack of communication between her and certain academic societies and scientists in Europe, where most scientific discoveries were emerging at the time. However, rather disappointingly, the most significant reason behind her paper was overlooked was her being a woman, and how she was considered a ‘natural philosopher’ rather than a scientist due to a lack of prior experience (7).

Although there had been great developments towards securing the full, vindicated rights of women since Eunice Foote’s time, women’s accomplishments continue to go unnoticed or underrepresented in society; this is what truly makes Foote’s story relevant in modern times. Therefore, like other women that will be touched upon in this series and many more, Eunice Foote’s accomplishments require a tribute as they remind us how much women had to struggle to pave the way for female scientists modern-day.

Works Cited

1. Dominus, Susan. “Women Scientists Were Written out of History. It’s Margaret Rossiter’s Lifelong Mission to Fix That.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Oct. 2019, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/unheralded-women-scientists-finally-getting-their-due-180973082/#:~:text=During%20a%20lull%20in%20the,Never.
2. Rossiter, Margaret W. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 325–41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/285482. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
3. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Alma Classics, 2019.
4. Ortiz, Joseph D., and Roland Jackson. “Understanding Eunice Foote’s 1856 Experiments: Heat Absorption by Atmospheric Gases.” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 76, no. 1, 2020, pp. 67–84., doi:10.1098/rsnr.2020.0031.
5. Schwartz, John. “Overlooked No More: Eunice Foote, Climate Scientist Lost to History.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/obituaries/eunice-foote-overlooked.html.
6. Tyndall, John. “Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. 10, 1859, pp. 37–39, http://www.jstor.org/stable/111604. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
7. Jackson, Roland. “Eunice Foote, John Tyndall and a Question of Priority.” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 74, no. 1, 2019, pp. 105–118., doi:10.1098/rsnr.2018.0066.