{"id":4158,"date":"2023-09-15T00:43:23","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T04:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-forgotten-woman-who-discovered-the-greenhouse-effect-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-09-15T00:43:23","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T04:43:23","slug":"the-forgotten-woman-who-discovered-the-greenhouse-effect-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-forgotten-woman-who-discovered-the-greenhouse-effect-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary<\/a>, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. <\/p>\n

The year is 1836. <\/p>\n

No university anywhere in the world would admit her. <\/p>\n

No scientific society would grant her membership. <\/p>\n

Still, Eunice Newton Foote<\/strong> (July 17, 1819\u2013September 30, 1888) would go on to become the first scientist to link atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to rising planetary temperature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One August day half a lifetime after graduating from Troy and throwing her energies at the suffrage movement \u2014 Susan B. Anthony would celebrate her as one of its founders \u2014 Eunice folded her hands into her lap in an auditorium full of distinguished scientists and their dressed up wives as she waited to watch someone else present her own work. A decade earlier, astronomer Maria Mitchell<\/a> had become the first woman admitted into America\u2019s scientific pantheon, the American Association for the Advancement of Science \u2014 but on the default certificate of admission, the word Fellow<\/em> had been crossed out in pencil<\/a> and Honorary Member<\/em> handwritten over it. Women were still in the shadows of science. Like Beatrix Potter\u2019s revelatory research into the reproduction of algae<\/a>, Eunice Foote\u2019s paper was read on her behalf by a man: the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.<\/p>\n

That paper \u2014 Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun\u2019s Rays<\/em><\/a>, published in 1856 \u2014 would remain the only physics paper published by an American woman for three decades, until a year after Eunice\u2019s death. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In it, she detailed her simple, ingenious experiments demonstrating the heat-absorbing properties of water vapor and carbon dioxide: <\/p>\n

Using four thermometers, an air pump, and two glass cylinders \u2014 one filled with carbon dioxide (or \u201ccarbonic acid gas,\u201d as it was then known) and the other with ordinary air \u2014 she found that when placed in direct sunlight, the CO2<\/sub> cylinder trapped more heat and maintained it longer than the other. <\/p>\n

She concluded that \u201can atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature\u201d and that if carbon dioxide levels in our current atmosphere were to rise, so would the planet\u2019s temperature.<\/p>\n

\"Solar