Florence Nightingale was a pioneer of public health and the founder of modern nursing.
Because of Florence Nightingale, nursing is one of the most regulated and respected professions in the world.
Named after the city of birth, Florence, Italy, Florence Nightingale was born on May 12th, 1820 into an upper class British family.
As a woman of her time in her class, it would have been expected that she would marry, maintain a lovely home and be a hostess.
But Florence Nightingale had very different plans.
Though at the time, nursing was not a respected profession, Nightingale felt very called to become a nurse.
At age 24, Nightingale defied her parents' expectations to marry a suitable match, and left England to study at the Kaiserswerth Hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany.
When she returned from Germany, she took a job as a nurse at a hospital in London, and she was eventually promoted after only a year to be head of nursing there.
She improved sanitary conditions so much that she garnered a reputation as a reformer and as an advocate for public health.
During the Crimean War, the British press made public the horrendous conditions of the wounded soldiers in Turkey.
