Greenhouse effect: Google doodles to mark Eunice Newton Foote's 204th birthday

She was the first person to discover the greenhouse effect and its role in the warming of Earth’s climate.

Google decorated its website with an interactive doodle that featured 11 slides.

Foote was born on this day in 1819 in Connecticut. She attended the Troy Female Seminary, a school that encouraged students to attend science lectures and participate in chemistry labs, read the google doodle website.

While science became a lifelong passion for Foote, she also dedicated time to campaigning for women’s rights.

In 1848, Foote attended the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. She was the fifth signatory of the Declaration of Sentiments—a document that demanded equality for women in social and legal status.

At this time, women were widely shunned from the scientific community. Undeterred, Foote conducted experiments on her own.

After placing mercury thermometers in glass cylinders, she discovered that the cylinder containing carbon dioxide experienced the most significant heating effect in the sun.

Foote was ultimately the first scientist to make the connection between rising carbon dioxide levels and the warming of the atmosphere.

After Foote published her findings, she produced her second study on atmospheric static electricity in the journal Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

These were the first two physics studies published by a woman in the US. Around 1856, a male scientist presented her work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Those discussions led to further experiments which uncovered what is known as the Greenhouse effect—when gasses like carbon dioxide trap heat from the sun, the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere gradually rises.