Inspiration to Live Your Magic: 75 Inspiring Biographies

Florence Nightingale
Eschewing the upper-class British life into which she’d been born, 
Florence Nightingale became a nurse on the front lines of war, 
advocated for improved sanitation in hospitals, and started the world’s 
first official training program for nurses.
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A woman born into a wealthy, upper-class British home in the early 1800s was supposed 
to do just one thing: become the wife of a wealthy, upper-class man.
But, Florence Nightingale had other ideas. Her father had taught her advanced 
mathematics, so young Florence knew she had a good brain. To Florence, the 
comfortable lives of the wealthy women around her seemed shallow. She felt she was 
destined for something more worthwhile.
At age seventeen, Florence announced that she had found her calling in life - she wanted 
to become a nurse. Her mother and sister were horrified. Wealthy young women of that 
time simply did not work, and certainly avoided all contact with “the lower classes.”
It took a lot of strength of character for Nightingale to go against the conventions of the 
day and the wishes of her family. But she persisted, working hard to study nursing, and 
traveling around Europe and the Middle East to broaden her education.
Other wealthy English people thought she was eccentric or shameful, but the Crimean 
War changed everything and made Florence Nightingale a national heroine.
The war involving the British, Russian, French, and Ottoman empires created terrible 
conditions for wounded soldiers. There was little medicine, a scarcity of trained doctors, 

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and virtually no sanitation. More soldiers were dying of diseases in the hospitals than 
were being killed on the battlefield.
Florence Nightingale led a group of volunteer nurses to the front lines in what is now 
Turkey. The soldiers there described her as an “angel,” and nicknamed her The Lady with 
the Lamp due to her late-night visits to comfort the sick and dying. The story of this 
wealthy woman who put aside riches and comfort to risk her life in filthy conditions 
became a national sensation in Britain, and inspired many people to follow her example.
After the war, Florence Nightingale used her skills in advanced mathematics to determine 
why so many soldiers had died. She realized that sanitation was the key to saving lives, 
and began to campaign for cleaner conditions in hospitals. She invented a new kind of pie 
chart, the “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” to prove her point to politicians and bureaucrats 
who didn’t understand statistics.
Florence Nightingale took advantage of her newly acquired fame to raise funds and set up 
the world’s first official training program for nurses. She is considered the founder of 
modern nursing.
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