Medicine
Florence Nightingale
Founder of modern nursing and pioneer of medical statistics
Born 1820 · Died 1910
Photo: Henry Hering (1814-1893) · Public domain
«I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse.»
Florence Nightingale reorganised military hospitals during the Crimean War and cut the death rate dramatically by insisting on sanitation. She founded the first secular nursing school in the world and was an innovative statistician.
Key achievements
- Founded the first secular nursing school in the world, 1860
- First woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society, 1858
- Invented the polar area diagram to prove deaths were preventable
Universities
London
Founded the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in 1860, now part of King's College London.
Facts
- She invented the polar area diagram, a form of pie chart, to show ministers that most soldiers were dying of preventable disease rather than wounds.
- She was the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society, in 1858.
- She spent the last fifty years of her life largely bedridden from an illness contracted in Crimea, and ran her reforms from her room.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.