FOOTE, Eunice Newton.

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"On a new source of electrical excitation." Uncommon first edition of the first article by a woman published in the Proceedings of the AAAS: a well-preserved copy in the original wrappers, with the ownership signature of American ornithologist George N. Lawrence (1806-1895), listed as a member of the AAAS on p. xxxviii of this volume.The American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888) is best remembered for her discovery of the absorption of thermal radiation by carbon dioxide and water vapour: namely, the greenhouse effect. Her famous paper on the topic was presented to the AAAS in August 1856, read on her behalf by Joseph Henry (first Secretary of the Smithsonian), and published shortly after in the American Journal of Science and Arts.This is Foote's second paper, which provides an early, experimental description of the effect of a pressure-driven change on the static electricity of air, with reference to observations by Humboldt, Sabine, and de Saussure. It was presented to the AAAS on 14 August 1857, again read by Joseph Henry on her behalf. Its first appearance in print was in the Proceedings; abbreviated versions later appeared in the American Journal of Science and Arts and in the Philosophical Magazine.In Mary Creese's landmark study of American and British women scientists from 1800 to 1900, she noted that, of the approximately 3,400 scientific publications authored by women in the period - less than 1% of the total publis

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