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Dorothea Dix
In 1840 Dorothea Dix began working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients and for better prison conditions. She is most known for this role as crusader for humane treatment of the insane. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was hospital administrator for Union Soldiers during the Civil War. She became the best known Civil War nurse. She was known as "Mother Bickerdyke". -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards was Americas first professionally trained American nurse. She established nursing training programs in the United States and Japan. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Mahoney was the first African American registered nurse in the US. She was one of four to complete the nursing program at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. -
Clara Barton
Founder of the American Red Cross on May 21, 1881 in Dansville, NY. She was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
In her time as head of the nursing program at Cook County Hospital nursing school in Chicago, she implemented an array of reforms that set standards for nursing education. One of her most notable contributions to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy for nursing students. Students would need to prove their competency in order to receive qualifications. -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock compiled the first, and most important, manual of drugs for nurses, Materia Medica for Nurses. Through her teaching, lecturing, and writing, she strove to improve both the health of the poor and the nursing profession. -
Lillian Wald
In 1893 she began teaching a class on nursing for Lower East Side women. She devoted her life to caring for the sick residents of the Lower East Side. She was the founder of the Henry Street Settlement. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Mary Nutting became the world's first professor of nursing in 1907 at the Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City. From 1910 to 1925 she was head of the Department of Nursing and Health at the college. She was the first nurse to hold each position. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was an activist in american birth control. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921. -
Annie Goodrich
Became dean of the first nursing program at Yale University in 1924. Known as a crusader and diplomat among nurses, she was constantly active in local, state, national, and international nursing affairs. She was an outstanding leader and nurse educator whose vision set the course for nurisng education -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge was an American nurse midwife. She founded the Frontier Nursing Service to provide professional healthcare in the Appalacian Mountains. -
Ida V. Moffett
Worked as a nurse from 1926 to 1995. Moffett was the driving force behind numerous successful efforts to bring professionalism and advanced academic training to the field of nursing. She led in implementation of 1945 legislation which led to licensure for practical nurses. She then guided development of Alabama's first training program for licensed practical nurses at Baptist Hospital in Gadsden, Alabama. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Lillian Holland Harvey was Dean of the Tuskegee (Institute) University School of Nursing from 1948 to 1973. Under her leadership and untiring efforts, the School of Nursing at Tuskegee became the first to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing in the state of Alabama. -
Hildegard Peplau
Hildegard Peplau was a nursing theorist whose seminal work Interpersonal Relations in Nursing was published in 1952. Dr. Peplau emphasized the nurse-client relationship as the foundation of nursing practice. She was also known as the "mother of psychiatric nursing". -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem is founder of Orem model of nursing, or Self Care Deficit Nursing. Restoring, promoting and maintaining health are the goals Dorothea Orem’s Self-care Model promotes. -
Virginia Henderson
Virginia Henderson is famous for her definition of nursing. It is one of the most widely used definitions or nursing. She is known as "the foremost nurse of the 20th Century". -
Martha Rogers
Martha Rogers is best known for developing the Science of Unitary Human Beings and her landmark book, An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. -
Madeleine Leininger
Dr. Madeleine Leininger is the founder of the worldwide Transcultural Nursing movement. She developed the concept of transcultural nursing. She realized there was a need for nurses to understand each patients culture and backgroud to provide adequate care. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson's research has been in the area of human caring and loss. Her Theory of Human Caring was developed in 1979.
