A British philanthropist, 1820— 1910, who is considered the founder of nursing as a profession, a formidable statistician, and a pioneering hospital reformer. She was one of many trained nurses to serve in Crimea and dramatically lowered the death rate in the British army by advocating cleanliness and reform of sanitary conditions in hospitals at the battlefront. The astonishing decrease in morbidity and mortality at the front riveted the public both in Britain and in the rest of the West, and the Nightingale Fund gained large contributions from donors around the world. The fund was used to establish a school of nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, England, in 1860. The school became a model for nursing schools around the world, and the first nursing school based on the Nightingale model to be established in the U.S. was at Bellevue Hospital in New York.