Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale, born in Florence, Italy, on May 12th, 1820 had a passion for nursing. Even against her wealthy family’s beliefs that she shouldn’t become a nurse because that was the job of the working class. Her father, William Nightingale taught her Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, history, philosophy, and mathematics.
Florence’s father gave her permission to train as a nurse in 1851. She soon moved to Turkey to participate in the Crimean War. She took thirty-eight nurses and worked at a the Scutari army hospital. There she found the conditions appalling and worked to make changes in the way the army hospitals treated the British Army. While doing this, Florence lowered the death rate at army camps by eliminating diseases such as typhus, cholera, and dysentery and improving hygiene. She reduced the mortality rate from diseases from an astonishing 40% to a mere 2%.
Florence Nightingale applied statistical methods to civilian and army hospitals, midwifery, Indian public health, and colonial schools. It didn’t take long for her to become a recognized statistician. In 1858 she was elected to be the first female member of the Statistical Society and was also an honorary member of the American Statistical Association. From as early as 1872 she decided to make a lasting contribution to education in statistics. Her idea of designing a Professorship of Statistics which would mainly be based on the application of statistics to social problems was brought to the attention of her friend, Benjamin Jowlett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford. As the years went on she approached Francis Galton, the eminent mathematician to assist her in planning her program. Although the idea was great, her plan failed in 1891 and she revoked her bequest of £2000 that she promised to donate to the Professorship.
Florence nightingale is still known as the "Passionate Statistician". Most people remember her from such topics as, "health care auditing", and "quality management". She is also known as the pioneer of epidemiological methods for her use of public health statistics. Above all, though, she is sill known as the "Lady with the Lamp".