Eunice Foote, John Tyndall and a question of priority

Abstract

In 1856, an American woman, Eunice Foote, discovered the absorption of thermal radiation by carbon dioxide and water vapour. That was three years before John Tyndall, who is generally credited with this important discovery—a cornerstone of our current understanding of the greenhouse effect, climate change, weather and meteorology. Tyndall did not reference Foote's work. From a contemporary perspective, one might expect that Tyndall would have known of her findings. But it appears that he did not, raising deeper historical questions about the connections and relationships between American and European physicists in the mid nineteenth century. The discovery is seen as a significant moment in physics generally and in climate science in particular, and demands a proper analysis. This paper explores the argument about priority, and the issues that the episode highlights in terms of simultaneous discovery, the development of science in America, gender, amateur status, the reputation of American science in Europe and the networks and means of communication between researchers in America and Europe in the 1850s.

Atmospheric Temperature and CO2: Hen-Or-Egg Causality?

“…Arrhenius [8] cites several other authors, among whom Tyndall (1865, [10]) for pointing out the enormous importance of atmospheric absorption of radiation and for having the opinion that water vapour has the greatest influence on this. Interestingly, it appears that the first experiments on the ability of water vapour and carbon dioxide to absorb heat were undertaken even earlier by Eunice Newton Foote (1856, [11]), even though she did not recognize the underlying mechanisms or even the distinction of short-and long-wave radiation [12][13][14]).…”

Atmospheric Temperature and CO2: Hen-or-Egg Causality?

“…Arrhenius [4] cites several other authors, among whom Tyndall (1865, [6]) for pointing out the enormous importance of atmospheric absorption of radiation and for having the opinion that water vapour has the greatest influence on it. However, it appears that the first experiments on the subject, for both water vapour and carbon dioxide, were undertaken even earlier by the female scientist Eunice Newton Foote (1856, [7]; see also [8,9]).…”

Stokes, Tyndall, Ruskin and the nineteenth-century beginnings of climate science

“…. .. 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 Tyndall and later workers do not appear to have known of her work, which was only recently rediscovered [16]. Foote's experiments were on solar heating of samples of air with amounts of water vapour and carbon dioxide and comparing them with samples of the same composition in the shade.…”