Eunice Newton Foote

Eunice Newton Foote (July 17, 1819, Goshen, Connecticut – September 30, 1888, Lenox, Massachusetts) was an American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner from Seneca Falls, New York, who was an early researcher of the greenhouse effect and a signatory of the Declaration of Sentiments.

As a member of the editorial committee for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, Foote was one of the signatories of the convention's Declaration of Sentiments. She signed with her husband Elisha and was one of five women who prepared the proceedings for publication.

Foote conducted early work on the warming effect of the sun on air, including how this was increased by carbonic acid gas (carbon dioxide), later called the greenhouse effect, which was presented by Prof. Joseph Henry at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 1856. A contemporary account describes the occasion as follows: Prof. Henry then read a paper by Mrs. Eunice Foote, prefacing it with a few words, to the effect that science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true. (Wells, 1857, p. 159-160, cited by Raymond Sorenson.)

Foote's work preceded the better-known work of John Tyndall on the warming of CO₂ by infrared radiation by three years. Similar experiments are taught in modern schools.

She also worked on electrical excitation of gases, published in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1857, and received a patent in 1860 for "filling for soles of boots and shoes".

Eunice was described as "a fine portrait and landscape painter. She was an inventive genius, and a person of unusual beauty." Her father was Isaac Newton Jr., originally of Goshen, Connecticut and later a farmer in East Bloomfield, New York and her mother was Thirza. She had six sisters and five brothers. On August 12, 1841, she married Elisha Foote, a judge, statistician and inventor in East Bloomfield. Elisha and Eunice lived in Seneca Falls on North Park Street (the house is still there as of 2016). They were the parents of Mary Foote Henderson, an artist and writer born July 21, 1842, and Augusta Newton Arnold, born October 1844, a writer who wrote The Sea at Ebb Tide and a trustee of Barnard College. Augusta married Francis B. Arnold on March 6, 1869. Eunice and Elisha had six grandchildren, three by each daughter. They later moved to Saratoga, New York. Elisha died in 1883 and Eunice died five years later, on September 30, 1888.

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