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Foote, who was born in Connecticut (in the town of Goshen in Litchfield County), and died in Lenox, Massachusetts, was the first person to document what we now call the "greenhouse effect." Google said Foote "planted the seed" for climate change awareness more than 160 years ago.
According to NewScientist, Foote described how different gases, such as oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide, behaved differently when exposed to sunlight in 1856. Despite her revelation, her contribution was not noted until 2011, when a historian found evidence of Foote's discovery two years before another scientist recorded the same phenomena.
Foote was also the first scientist to note how these gases could impact Earth's temperature. In particular, how carbon dioxide could raise global temperatures.
“An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; and if, as some suppose, at one period of its history, the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action, as well as from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted,” her paper noted, per The Independent.
She was the first woman to publish a study in a US physics journal.
Foote was also a dogged advocate for women's rights and worked tirelessly to earn women the right to vote, something she would not see in her lifetime. Foote died in 1888.
To learn more about Eunice Newton Foote, visit Google.com and click on the drawing above the search bar.
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