Personatge
Florence,

Florence Nightingale

(The Lady of the Lamp)

Florence (Italy), 12-05-1820 — East Wellow (England), 13-08-1910  

Període d'activitat: 1854 — 1872

Classificació geogràfica: Europa > Itàlia

Moviments socio-culturals

Grups per àmbit de dedicació

Governants > Polítiques

Activistes > Feministes (activistes)

Científiques > Matemàtiques

Sanitàries > Infermeres

Humanístiques > Feministes (pensadores)

Educadores > Professores

Escriptores

Context de creació femenina

Florence Nightingale is known for being a pioneer in modern medicine and for using her mathematical skills on that field. She stood out in statistics, creating pie charts and applying descriptive statistics. 

Nightingale helped promote what was considered a revolutionary idea at the time: those social phenomena could be studied objectively and analysed mathematically.

She also worked as a writer, politician and teacher.

She was contemporary with other important female mathematicians: Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), pioneer in computer language; Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916), who studied mostly geometry; Sofya Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), devoted to mathematical analysis and differential equations; Charlotte Angas Scott (1858-1931), who worked on algebra and geometry and fought for the inclusion of women in universities; Mary Somerville (1780-1872), considered to be "the queen of 19th century science"; and Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), first woman to be a professional astronomer in the United States.

She was an inspiration to other women that later on worked on statistics and probability, like Hilda Geiringer (1893-1973) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972).

Nightingale's work is also an important link in the study of English feminism. In some of her essays, like Cassandra, she complains about how women were considered incompetent, and she demands a better education for them and the possibility to apply this education.

Ressenya

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a renowned British nurse and statistic. She was a pioneer of modern medicine. She used her knowledge of statistics in epidemiology and health statistics. She created "pie charts", a circular graphic or polar area diagrams, and urged to produce statistics to control the health situation. She had a decisive influence in the creation of the British Red Cross in 1870.

Activitats

  • Control de residus urbans [cat] [es] [en]
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 3r ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 3r ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(B) ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(B) ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(A) ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(A) ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
  • La família [cat] [es] [en]
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 2n ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 2n ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
  • La sida [cat] [es] [en]
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(B) ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 4t(B) ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
  • Les edats [cat] [es] [en]
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 3r ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 3r ESO > Sentit socioafectiu
  • Nombre de suspensos [cat] [es] [en]
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 1r ESO > Sentit estocàstic
    • Espanya > Matemàtiques > 1r ESO > Sentit socioafectiu

Justificacions

  • She was an important statistic. She created the circular graphic colloquially known as "pie chart"
  • She was a foremother of representing information visually, a concept that she applied in nursing. She used her techniques to prove that statistics helps to organise information in order to contrast it and to learn from it, thus creating room for improvement.
  • She was an innovator in recollection, tabulation, interpretation and graphic representation of descriptive statistics.
  • She was the first woman to be elected member of the Royal Statistical Society for her contributions to army and hospital statistics. She was also a member of the American Statistical Association.
  • She was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit of the United Kingdom.
  • She laid the foundations for giving nursing a professional status with the creation, in 1860, of her nursing school at Saint Thomas hospital in London.
  • The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday.
  • She was a British leader in hospital remodelling.
  • She inspired the creation of the British Red Cross.
  • She was a feminist: she fought for the right to study mathematics and for the right to be a nurse.

Biografia

She was born in Florence in 1820, but was raised in Derbyshire, England, in a wealthy landowner family. Her father, William Nightingale, was involved in the anti-slavery movement, and was a fierce believer in the fact that women, and her daughters, in particular, deserved an education. Her sister and she learned Italian, Latin, Greek, history and mathematics, but also sewing and embroidery so that they could become the perfect wives, which was the only fate for Victorian girls who came from a good family. Among her tutors, she had the renowned mathematician James Joseph Sylvester. She received lessons in arithmetic, geometry and algebra. Belgian scientist Adolphe Quetelet, who had applied statistics into data of several fields, also had an influence on her.

At the age of 23, she opposed her parents by telling them she wanted to become a nurse, because it was a profession associated to working-class women. Her mother was concerned about finding her daughter a good husband, a failed task considered that Florence never married.

She turned down all her suitors and demonstrated her determination to achieve her goals: "tending to the sick full-time, with nothing that could set her back".

Before she became a full-time nurse, she was a mathematics tutor for children, with a well-planned, definite program. In her "Lesson plans for teaching arithmetic and geometry" she included problems based on the lives of her students. She was particularly concerned with the education of girls.

In 1850, she started her nursing studies at the Saint Vincent de Paul Institute in Alexandria, Egypt. That same year, she worked at Kaiserwerth's hospital, near Düsseldorf. This fact marked a milestone in her life, and she wrote her experiences, which became her first published work. When she came back to London in 1853, took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen free of pay.

In 1854, the British secretary of war asked Florence to become a nurse-administrator to supervise the introduction of nurses in military hospitals during the Crimean War. Her official title was Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey. Florence moved to Scutari, where the main British hospital was. The situation at the hospital was alarming. The main causes of death were diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery, which meant that soldiers were seven times more likely to die after contracting one of these diseases at the hospital than in the battlefield.

Although being a woman implied constantly fighting the military authorities, she reformed the hospital system little by little. She compiled data and systematised the practice of keeping records; this information was later used as a tool to improve military and city hospitals. Her knowledge of mathematics played a great role when she used the data that she had collected to calculate the mortality rate at the hospital. These calculations demonstrated that improving the sanitary methods used would reduce the number of deaths. She used these statistics to create her polar area diagram or 'coxcomb', as she called it. These were used to give a graphic representation of the mortality rate during the Crimean War (1854-1856).

She took care of the sick all day and night long. At night, she could be seen tending the sick with a small lamp, which earned her the nickname of "the Lady with the lamp". Later on, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 –1882) immortalised the term in his poem "Santa Filomena".

In 1856, Florence Nightingale came back to England as a national hero. She used her statistics to show the need for a sanitary reform in all military hospitals. In 1857 she conducted a formal study that ended with the creation of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army.

Florence Nightingale's contribution to the field of statistics was rewarded with her appointment in 1858 as a member of the Royal Statistical Society. She was the first woman to hold this position. Besides, in 1874, she became an honorific member of the American Statistical Association.

In 1860, she inaugurated the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. It was financed through the Nightingale Fund, a public fund established during Florence's time in Crimea.

During the American Civil War, she was an army health consultant for the government of the United States. 

In her last years, Florence Nightingale wrote a thorough report on the sanitary conditions in the rural areas of India. She promoted the introduction of improvements to medical care and the public health system of the country.

She had a decisive influence in the creation of the British Red Cross in 1870.

She retired in 1872; she went blind in 1895, and she progressively lost other abilities, until she became disabled.

In 1883, Queen Victoria gave her the Royal Red Cross for her labour. She was also the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit by Edward VII in 1907.

She died on August 13, 1910, in East Wellow, England.

In 1915, a monument was erected in Waterloo Place, London, to commemorate Florence's contribution to the Crimean War and the health of the army.

In 1934, the Florence Nightingale International Foundation was created with the aim of properly carry on her educational legacy.

She was an innovator in recollection, tabulation, interpretation and graphic representation of descriptive statistics; she showed how statistics could be used as way to monitor and to learn, and how it could be applied for improving medical and surgical practices.

She had strong opinions on women's rights. In her book Suggestions for Thought to Searchers After (religious) Truth (1859) she strongly argued that the restrictions that prohibited women from having careers should be lifted. She fought for the privilege to study mathematics, for the right to become a nurse and for every woman’s right to "give her best, no matter what it is, to the service to the World of God". For that reason, we consider her a feminist.

Obres


She wrote around two hundred books, reports and opuscules that had important repercussions on military health care, social aid in India, civilian hospitals, medical statistics and tending to the sick. She also wrote about feminism and women's roles in society. Among them, the following stand out: 

- "Notes on Nursing" (1860), the first book written specifically for teaching nursing. It was subsequently translated into many languages.

- "Notes on hospitals" (1859).

- "Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes" (1861). 

- "Nurses, training of" and "Nursing the sick" (1882), two articles for Quain’s dictionary of medicine.

- "Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth" (1860), where she exhibited her feminist thoughts. Out of her essays, the most famous one is "Cassandra", in which she criticised the over-feminisation of women that left them in a state of social incapacity.

Bibliografia

  • Ancheta Niebla, Eduarda “Los amores de FlorenceNightingale” in Enfermería Avanza (24/03/2022) <http://enfeps.blogspot.com/2010/12/los-amores-de-florence-nightingale.html> <http://enfeps.blogspot.com/2010/12/los-amores-de-florence-nightingale.html>
  • León-Castellá, Alejandra, “La dama de la lámpara Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)” (24/03/2022) < http://www.cientec.or.cr/equidad/nightingale.html
  • Macho Stadker, Marta, “Florence Nightingale, mucho más que la dama de la lampara” in Mujeres con ciencia (24/03/2022) <https://mujeresconciencia.com/2017/08/22/florence-nightingale-mucho-mas-la-dama-la-lampara/>
  • Sbardella, Amaranta “Florence Nightingale, la heroína de los hospitales” in Historia National Geographic (24/03/2022) <https://historia.nationalgeographic.com.es/a/florence-nightingale-heroina-hospitales_14173>

Enfocament Didàctic

She can be studied in mathematics when explaining statistics.

She can also be studied in literature (she has many written works: books, reports, opuscules...).

In any subject in which statistics are used to represent data: economy, history, geography. 

Documents