05/12/2026
“The Lady with the Lamp,” Florence Nightingale, was a nursing advocate, a pioneering statistician, and a leader in making hospitals cleaner and safer spaces. She wrote more than 150 books, pamphlets, and reports on health-related issues and created one of the first known pie charts.
Born to English parents in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820, Nightingale believed she received a “calling” from God to help the sick.
With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, British forces were ill prepared to deal with the limitations in medical supplies, the vast number of sick and wounded soldiers, and the unsanitary conditions, with some soldiers kept on the floors. Nightingale and her team of 38 nurses arrived at the British camp outside of Constantinople and greatly increased the levels of care and sanitation to the hospital. Nightingale earned her nickname by carrying a lamp and checking on the soldiers at night. Within six months, the hospital’s death rate dropped from 40 percent to 2 percent.
When Nightingale returned from the war, she continued to improve the conditions of hospitals and taught the next generations of healthcare professionals in the Nightingale Training School.
Florence Nightingale died August 13, 1910 at the age of 90. International Nurses Day – the final day of Nurses Week – has been celebrated on her birthday of May 12 since 1965.
