In 1856, Eunice Foote, a pioneering scientist and women’s rights activist, made a discovery that should have altered the course of history. Using little more than glass cylinders and thermometers, she demonstrated that carbon dioxide and water vapor trap heat. She went further, predicting that if Earth’s atmosphere ever accumulated more carbon dioxide, the planet would warm.

She was right. More than 160 years before the modern climate crisis became headline news, Foote foresaw global warming.

Yet her groundbreaking work was overshadowed. In an era when women were barred from presenting scientific research, her findings were instead read aloud by a man at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. While others who came later received credit for similar discoveries, Foote’s name faded into obscurity for over a century.

It was only in recent decades that historians and climate scientists began to recognize her extraordinary contribution. Today, her work is hailed as the earliest known scientific description of the greenhouse effect — a concept central to our understanding of climate change.

We now live in the very future she warned about: rising global temperatures, extreme weather, and a planet under stress. Remembering Eunice Foote is more than an act of historical correction — it is a reminder of how women’s voices have too often been silenced in science, and how their insights, when overlooked, can alter the trajectory of human progress.

Let’s not forget her again. Her name deserves to be remembered alongside the giants of science: Eunice Foote.