Written by Cynthia Audain, Class of 1998 (Agnes Scott College)

Florence Nightingale is most remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of

hospital sanitation methods. For most of her ninety years, Nightingale pushed for
reform of the British military health-care system and with that the profession of
nursing started to gain the respect it deserved. Unknown to many, however, was
her use of new techniques of statistical analysis, such as during the Crimean War
when she plotted the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She developed
the "polar-area diagram" to dramatize the needless deaths caused by unsanitary
conditions and the need for reform. With her analysis, Florence Nightingale
revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and
subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection,
tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics.

Florence Nightingale's two greatest life achievements--pioneering of nursing and

the reform of hospitals--were amazing considering that most Victorian women of
her age group did not attend universities or pursue professional careers. It was her
father, William Nightingale, who believed women, especially his children, should
get an education. So Nightingale and her sister learned Italian, Latin, Greek,
history, and mathematics. She in particular received excellent early preparation in
mathematics from her father and aunt, and some references also claim she was
tutored in mathematics by James Sylvester (although there seems to be no
documentary evidence of this). In 1854, after a year as a unpaid superintendent of a
London "establishment for gentlewomen during illness," the Secretary of War,
Sidney Herbert, recruited Nightingale and 38 nurses for service in Scutari during
the Crimean War.

During Nightingale's time at Scutari, she collected data and systematized record-
keeping practices. Nightingale was able to use the data as a tool for improving city
and military hospitals. Nightingale's calculations of the mortality rate showed that
with an improvement of sanitary methods, deaths would decrease. In February,
1855, the mortality rate at the hospital was 42.7 percent of the cases treated (Cohen
131). When Nightingale's sanitary reform was implemented, the mortality rate
declined. Nightingale took her statistical data and represented them graphically.
She invented polar-area charts, where the statistic being represented is proportional
to the area of a wedge in a circular diagram (Cohen 133).

As Nightingale demonstrated, statistics provided an organized way of learning and

lead to improvements in medical and surgical practices. She also developed a
Model Hospital Statistical Form for hospitals to collect and generate consistent
data and statistics. She became a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858
and an honorary member of the American Statistical Association in 1874. Karl
Pearson acknowledged Nighingale as a "prophetess" in the development of applied
statistics.
Read about the mathematical education in the life of Florence Nightingale in an
article by Sally Lipsey that appeared in the Newsletter of the Association for
Women in Mathematics.

Watch a video on "The Lady With a Data Visualization" from the "Joy of Stats",
The Open University, England.
Florence Nightingale, byname Lady with the Lamp (born May 12, 1820, Florence [Italy]—died August
13, 1910, London,England), foundational philosopher of modern nursing, statistician, and social reformer.
Nightingale was put in charge ofnursing British and allied soldiers in Turkey during the Crimean War. She
spent many hours in the wards, and her night rounds giving personal care to the wounded established her
image as the “Lady with the Lamp.” Her efforts to formalize nursing education led her to establish the first
scientifically based nursing school—the Nightingale School of Nursing, at St. Thomas’ Hospital
in London(opened 1860). She also was instrumental in setting up training for midwives and nurses in
workhouse infirmaries. She was the first woman awarded the Order of Merit (1907). International Nurses
Day, observed annually on May 12, commemorates her birth and celebrates the important role of nurses in
health care.
Family ties and spiritual awakening
Florence Nightingale was the second of two daughters born, during an extended European honeymoon, to
William Edward and Frances Nightingale. (William Edward’s original surname was Shore; he changed his
name to Nightingale after inheriting his great-uncle’s estate in 1815.) Florence was named after the city of
her birth. After returning to England in 1821, the Nightingales had a comfortable lifestyle, dividing their
time between two homes, Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, located in central England, and Embley Park in
warmer Hampshire, located in south-central England. Embley Park, a large and comfortable estate, became
the primary family residence, with the Nightingales taking trips to Lea Hurst in the summer and
to London during the social season.
Florence was a precocious child intellectually. Her father took particular interest in her education, guiding
her through history, philosophy, and literature. She excelled in mathematics and languages and was able to
read and write French, German, Italian, Greek, and Latin at an early age. Never satisfied with the
traditional female skills of home management, she preferred to read the great philosophers and to engage
in serious political and social discourse with her father.
As part of a liberal Unitarian family, Florence found great comfort in her religious beliefs. At the age of
16, she experienced one of several “calls from God.” She viewed her particular calling as reducing human
suffering. Nursing seemed the suitable route to serve both God and humankind. However, despite having
cared for sick relatives and tenants on the family estates, her attempts to seek nurse’s training were
thwarted by her family as an inappropriate activity for a woman of her stature.
 Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910)
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 Florence Nightingale ©Famous for her work in the military
hospitals of the Crimea, Nightingale established nursing as a respectable profession for
women.
Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820, and named after the Italian city of her
birth. Her wealthy parents were in Florence as part of a tour of Europe. In 1837,
Nightingale felt that God was calling her to do some work but wasn't sure what that work
should be. She began to develop an interest in nursing, but her parents considered it to
be a profession inappropriate to a woman of her class and background, and would not
allow her to train as a nurse. They expected her to make a good marriage and live a
conventional upper class woman's life.

Nightingale's parents eventually relented and in 1851, she went to Kaiserwerth in

Germany for three months nursing training. This enabled her to become superintendent
of a hospital for gentlewomen in Harley Street, in 1853. The following year, the Crimean
War began and soon reports in the newspapers were describing the desperate lack of
proper medical facilities for wounded British soldiers at the front. Sidney Herbert, the
war minister, already knew Nightingale, and asked her to oversee a team of nurses in
the military hospitals in Turkey. In 1854 she led an expedition of 38 women to take over
the management of the barrack hospital at Scutari where she observed the disastrous
sanitary conditions.

She returned to England in 1856. In 1860, she established the Nightingale Training
School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Once the nurses were trained, they
were sent to hospitals all over Britain, where they introduced the ideas they had learned,
and established nursing training on the Nightingale model. Nightingale's theories,
published in 'Notes on Nursing' (1860), were hugely influential and her concerns for
sanitation, military health and hospital planning established practices which are still in
existence today. She died on 13 August 1910.