Eunice

Sometimes you get into telling a history story you thought you knew well, but then it blossoms into something bigger. I was going to tell you about the history of the greenhouse effect.  The first person to suggest the earth is comfy and warm because of the insulative properties of air was Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician and scientist in 1820. 

It wasn’t until 1861 that an Irish Scientist, John Tyndall, proved him correct. Tyndall was able to identify  the insulative gasses, the major ones being carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane.

Fourier and Tyndall were intellectual giants of their time. For example, Tyndall held 5 honorary doctorates and was a member of 35 scientific societies. Today, at the prestigious “University of East Anglia” the department that studies climate science is respectfully named in his honor; the Tyndall Centre. 

This was quite the accomplishment for a man who started his career as a surveyor, but then gave into his passion for knowledge. As he said, “The desire to grow intellectually did not forsake me…”

Tyndall’s reputation as a great scientist is rock solid. But, should he hold the title as the first person to discover the radiative properties of the greenhouse gases in 1861? Or, should it be an American named Eunice Newton Foote? 

At a recent presentation at Nicollet College, Pam McVety, environmental scientist and 30-year veteran of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, mentioned the name Eunice Foote as an early climate scientist. She was from Seneca Falls, New York and participated in the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, an early and influential meeting of the women’s rights movement.

Her known contribution to the understanding of greenhouse gasses is through a documented presentation to the 10^th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

She personally did not present her work. Joseph Henry, from the Smithsonian Institution, presented her work to the AAAS members in 1856. Her work, done with simple equipment, came to remarkably similar conclusions as John Tyndall’s. 

Her equipment was simply glass cylinders filled with different mixtures of gasses laid in the sun alongside a glass cylinder with unaltered air. One of her test glass cylinders was filled with “carbonic acid” gas, as carbon dioxide was then called. Laid in the sun it became considerably hotter than the one with unaltered air. She noted then, in 1856, that, “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a much higher temperature…” 

John Tyndall, as a man luckily well educated, became a surveyor just as the UK was running railroads from one end of the country to the next. He excelled at his work and made himself good money. His desire to grow intellectually sent him to college. In a stroke of fortune, he ended up studying in Germany. The best scientific minds in Chemistry and Physics in that time were Germans. These were the booster rockets that propelled Mr. Tyndall to greatness.

If, and this is a big “If”, we mobilize our society to reduce our pollution and stop sending our atmosphere to a much higher temperature, John Tyndall’s contribution to this rescue mission will be paramount and his place in history well deserved. 

Greyson Morrow