California SCR 99: Relative to Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day.

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 |Add To My Favorites |Track Bill | Version: 08/27/25 - Chaptered
 08/25/25 - Enrolled
 07/09/25 - Introduced

 SCR-99 Eunice Newton Foote.(2025-2026)

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SCR99:v97#DOCUMENTBill Start

 Senate Concurrent Resolution

 No. 99

 CHAPTER 158

 Relative to Eunice Newton Foote. 

 [
 Filed with

 Secretary of State
 August 27, 2025.
 ]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

SCR 99, Allen.
 Eunice Newton Foote.

This measure would honor the life and legacy of Eunice Newton Foote and proclaim July 17, 2025, as Eunice Newton Foote Day. 

Digest Key

 Fiscal Committee:
 NO 

Bill Text

WHEREAS, Eunice Newton Foote was a principal activist in the women’s rights movement, an inventor, and a groundbreaking scientist whose work helped establish the field of climate science; and 

WHEREAS, Born Eunice Newton on July 17, 1819, the 206th anniversary of which will be recognized on July 17, 2025, Eunice Newton Foote lived in Seneca Falls, New York, and was a key figure in the Seneca Falls Convention, held on July 19 to 20 in 1848, and a signatory to the Declaration of Sentiments, which demanded suffrage as well as social and legal equality for women; and

WHEREAS, Having attended the Troy Female Seminary and the Rensselaer School, Foote received a practical and theoretical education in history, literature, philosophy, and the sciences, as well as research and experimentation with the scientific method; and

WHEREAS, As an amateur scientist and distant relative of Sir Isaac Newton, Foote conducted a series of experiments in the 1850s analyzing the interaction of the sun’s rays on a fixed volume of various gases, from which she demonstrated that carbon dioxide was heated to a higher temperature by the same exposure to sunlight and cooled more slowly than air, and the influence of the water content of a gas on heat retention; and

WHEREAS, Having observed the pronounced effect of sunlight on carbon dioxide as compared to normal air or hydrogen, Foote concluded that, “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.”; and

WHEREAS, Foote laid out her findings and conclusions in her paper “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays,” which she submitted for the 10th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), marking the first published work to recognize climatic warming caused by an increased proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and

WHEREAS, Despite participating in the AAAS meeting in Albany, New York on August 23, 1856, Foote’s paper was presented by Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, who introduced her paper by stating, “Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true,” though he later discounted the significance of her work; and

WHEREAS, Upon its complete publication in the 1856 edition of the American Journal of Science and Arts, Foote’s paper became the first physics publication written by an American woman outside the field of astronomy to be included in a scientific journal, later being printed or summarized in a myriad of journals throughout 1856 and 1857; and

WHEREAS, While scientist John Tyndall has historically been credited as the “father of modern climate science” for his paper “Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies” published in 1859, his work made no reference to water vapor or carbon dioxide until his fourth publication and never made claims regarding climate impacts, all of which were years preceded by the published works of Eunice Newton Foote; and 

WHEREAS, Prior to her death in 1888, the only two physics papers by American women published in scientific journals were Foote’s 1856 and 1857 papers, joined by only 14 more papers by American women during the 19th century; and

WHEREAS, In addition to her published scientific works and multiple patents held under her name, Foote had many inventions patented under her husband’s name, and highlighted to Elizabeth Cady Stanton the pervasive practice of women’s inventions being patented under their husbands’ names as a consequence of the social and legal