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Connecticut has long been on the forefront of science and innovation, but a new children’s book explores the life of a scientist, inventor, and women’s rights advocate whose contributions to the modern understanding of Earth’s climate were unknown.
Eunice Newton Foote, who was born in Goshen in 1819, is considered the first person in the world to correctly posit that carbon dioxide increases temperature, a phenomenon we now know as the greenhouse effect. Foote’s experiments with atmospheric gases and her insights about the Earth’s past climate were groundbreaking for their time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
But like so many women scientists of her time, her experiments were overlooked for more than a century. British scientist John Tyndall had long been credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect until a researcher digging through historical documents in 2011 realized Foote’s paper was published two years before Tyndall published his work in 1859, according to Canadian award-winning children’s author L.E. Carmichael.
Foote’s story is part of Carmichael’s new children’s book called “The Matilda Effect: How 25 Women Were Erased from History,” which features various women scientists and investors who didn’t get the credit they deserved. Carmichael said she was inspired to write the book from her own past as a scientist and realizing how many women were overshadowed in history.
“I had done two other books called Polar and The Boreal Forest back-to-back, so that was two nature and environment books in a row, which meant I had been up to my eyeballs in climate change research for about five years and needed a change of pace,” Carmichael said. “I was peeking around at some other ideas and was trying to find kids books on women in science. While there are many out there, as I was reading them I was noticing they have a lot of stories about women we never heard before. The question I kept asking is ‘Why haven’t we heard of these women before? Why aren’t they more well-known?’”
Carmichael’s title for her book, “The Matilda Effect,” is a phrase coined by science historian Margaret Rossiter in 1993 to explain the systematic bias that ignores, minimizes or denies the scientific achievements and discoveries of women, often crediting their work to male colleagues instead. This phenomenon can be widely seen throughout history in the science, engineering and technology fields, according to Rossiter.
Like many women who made contributions to science, Foote’s research wasn’t known or appreciated until 120 years after her death in 1888, according to Carmichael. Foote was a scientist, inventor and women’s right’s advocate who, in the 1850s, conducted some of the first experiments exploring the effects of different atmospheric gases on temperature. During that time period, science was heavily dominated by men and women researchers were rare. Often women scientists would work out of their home or amateur laboratories, as women faced barriers to higher education and research institutions.
“Women were often not allowed to get access to higher education, so many women were self-educated or doing home experiments like Eunice was,” Carmichael said. “Often times, women were working behind the scenes as assistants in laboratories, often unpaid and working for or with men who get the credit for the work.
“Eunice was most likely inspired by what was happening around her, science as we know it today was really developing in the 19th century,” Carmichael added. “Geology was brand new. Paleontology was brand new. Darwin’s theory of evolution didn’t come out yet until 1859. So many of the things we now know as bedrock science were brand new and exciting back then.”
Carmichael said Foote was fortunate because she grew up in a fairly liberal part of the country and was born to parents who believed in women receiving an education. While born in Connecticut, her family moved to Ontario County in New York when she was young. She was educated at Troy Female Seminary, a women’s preparatory school in Troy now known as the Emma Willard School. The school had a chemistry lab, which inspired her to begin conducting experiments, Carmichael said.
“The man she married was also very supportive of her interest in science because they published scientific papers together, so she had supports in her life that many women of that time simply did not have,” Carmichael said. “I think it was all of those things together, that made her conduct this research in the 1850s. Scientists had also just figured out that Earth’s atmosphere was different at one time.”
Using glass cylinders, each encasing a mercury thermometer, Foote found that the heating effect of the sun was greater in moist air than dry air, and that it was highest of all in a cylinder containing carbon dioxide. Foote wrote in 1856, “The receiver containing this gas became itself much heated — very sensibly more so than the other — and on being removed (from the sun), it was many times as long in cooling.”
Her work was presented on Aug. 23, 1856, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to Carmichael. Her work was not read by her but by a male colleague named Joseph Henry, who was the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
“We don’t know why Jospeh Henry presented Eunice’s research, but I think that was the first step in her erasure from history, when a man presented her own research. Hilariously, the man who read that paper to the assembly didn’t understand what it meant. In all fairness, I don’t think most people knew what it meant then. The Industrial Revolution had just begun and the idea that humans could actually affect the climate at that time was brand new. When Joseph Henry was asked to comment on the significance of the paper, he said ‘It’s hard to know if it means anything or not,’ which shows he didn’t understand the meaning of it.”
Carmichael said that only a few years later did British scientist John Tyndall conduct much more complex research that showed the mechanism behind the greenhouse effect in 1861. She said it remains unclear if Tyndall knew of Foote’s experiments or not at the time he conducted his own research.
“Some people are convinced he saw her paper and stole it. Others refuse that idea and said he was an honorable man and would not have stolen research. So it’s murky and unclear. What we do know for sure is that Eunice is the first person to recognize that carbon dioxide concentration could affect the climate. Tyndall found the mechanism behind it. So that is an important discovery that Eunice did not make.”
In 2011, a fossil fuel scientist named Ray Sorensen was browsing through historical magazines and stumbled upon Foote’s experiments in a scientific conference paper. Carmichael said this was the first time that Foote’s name began to re-emerge in the scientific literature as an early pioneer of climate research.
“It is starting to happen, we now see a lot of articles and children’s books mentioning Eunice,” Carmichael said. “After more than a century, she is now getting the credit she has long since deserved.”
Carmichael said that she hopes the book inspires young women into careers in STEM and fuels them by seeing women role models in the scientific field. She also said she wants young men to read the book to better support their female colleagues inside and outside the classroom.
Today, more women are in science, technology and engineering, but it is still a field with a significant male-dominated population. Women make up just 28% of the overall field, according to data from the 2020 U.S. census.
“I think kids need to see someone else has done it for them to realize their own potential,” Carmichael said. “To see a woman who has done amazing work, to see someone who overcame challenges and still managed to find success. I hope girls that read this book become inspired. I definitely hope they get angry too. Kids understand the world is not a fair place. I also hope people give this book to boys too, because unless everyone knows this is happening, it will never change.”
Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com.
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