Born 12 May 1820 in Florence, Italy, Nightingale is universally regarded as the founder of trained nursing as a profession for women. She established the foundations of modern nursing with her treatment of the sick and injured during the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856. Nightingale made important contributions to the welfare of soldiers in peace and war, to military and hygiene, and to the foundation of British district nursing and the training of midwives.
Once back in London after the war, she founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses " the world‘s first of its kind in 1860, using the Nightingale fund of £45,000 subscribed by the public, a donation made in tribute to her services. The school marked the beginning of professional education in the nursing field. Her book Notes on Nursing became the first definitive textbook for the field. Nightingale became blind in 1901, received the Order of Merit from the king in 1907: the first woman to be conferred with such.
Florence Nightingale died 13 August 1910 in London England and was buried by six sergeants of the British army in a family grave in the country churchyard of East Wellow Hampshire, as she declined an offer of a national funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey.