Those of you familiar with American women’s call for the vote will recognize the name Seneca Falls. It is situated in picturesque upstate New York, near the top of Lake Cayuga, at the bottom of which sit Ithaca and Cornell University. Its main claim to fame is as the site of the first female convention ‘to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman’ in 1848, well before Cornell (itself an early beacon for female education) was founded. The Seneca Falls Convention was largely initiated by Quakers in this corner of the state, and took place a year after the New York State Assembly had passed a married woman’s property act (40 years before the UK got its act together to allow married women to hold property in their own name once they got married). Although its immediate impact may have been small, it stands as a landmark in the history of women’s suffrage.
One of the attendees and signatories to the Declaration of Sentiments that was the convention’s output, was a woman in her late 20’s who had moved to the town from New York City where she had grown up upon her marriage to an attorney; hre name was Eunice Foote. Although not one of the instigators of the two-day meeting, she was one of the editors of the proceedings. However, it is not the history of the vote or women’s rights I want to discuss here, but some science. Because, although her name is not one I was familiar with a few weeks ago, she does have a real claim to fame, albeit as an amateur scientist – the amateur-ness being inevitable for a woman of her day.
To change tack briefly, one of the perks of having (previously) been Master of a Cambridge College is that occasionally an alumnus/a would present me with a copy of their book. In this way I acquired a somewhat random collection of perhaps ten books which, not least because of their randomness, were (and are) a pleasure to read. One such book was given to me by Peter Stott, a climate scientist from the Met Office who has led various parts of the work of the IPCC. His book, Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change, is a somewhat terrifying read of his experiences attending and presenting his work on climate change over the last 25 years at different fora, in the face of hostility, disbelief and outright contradiction. Early on he sets the scientific scene for what the Greenhouse Effect is and why human actions have led to such dire consequences for us all. And here I read about Eunice Foote for the first time.
The early recognition of the power of carbon dioxide to trap heat is usually attributed to the work of John Tyndall, dating back to 1859 (when he showed how carbon dioxide interacted with infrared radiation) and 1861 when he discussed the potential consequence of this. However, in 1857 Foote had already published a paper (“Circumstances affecting the heat of the Sun’s rays ” in the American Journal of Science), notable for demonstrating the absorption of heat by CO2 and water vapor and hypothesizing that changing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere would alter the climate. She was not able, or was unaware of, the role of infrared radiation. But she explicitly said
‘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… must have necessarily resulted’.
The paper had been read to the American Association in 1856 by (a man of course) another scientist from New York State, Joseph Henry of self-inductance fame. She had very limited resources with which to do these experiments – I assume she was someone, like Hertha Ayrton later, who carried out her work in the kitchen – but she did get this paper into print. I’m not sure this is precisely a case of the Matilda Effect, since Tyndall’s work was more rigorous and a better platform on which to build an idea of climate change because it understood the role of infrared radiation and reflectance, but nevertheless Foote identified the challenge and recognized the implications. Whether Tyndall was aware of the work or not, he certainly didn’t cite it in his own papers.
At the time of her work (as of course continues to this day), people were discussing whether women were capable of doing science. It does seem that the US was well ahead of England at that time, because at least the schooling Foote had received (at Troy Female Seminary and the Rensselaer School) had allowed her to study and gain a broad education in scientific theory and practice, before girls had been able to enter serious academic schools at all in England. Queen’s College in London was the first such, and it was only founded in 1848. The work of ‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale’ opening up schools (such as Cheltenham Ladies College, North London Collegiate School and my own school, Camden School) where subjects such as science could be taught to young women, really only got going a decade later.
I find it interested that what is still a small rural part of New York State produced, not only the seminal women’s convention, but a seminal piece of science too. Foote’s name is one I must add to my own mental list of ‘women who did early science which then got overlooked’.