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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix was firstly a teacher and then a social reformer for the treatment of the mentally ill. She was an American activist on behalf of the insane who, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War in 1861, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses and her nurses provided the only care available in the field to the wounded Confederates. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke is known for delivering five hundred dollars worth of medical supplies for soldiers during the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Upon arriving in Cairo, Bickerdyke used the supplies to establish a hospital for the Northern soldiers and established more than three hundred field hospitals to assist sick and wounded soldiers. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton is best remembered for founding the American Red Cross, but she was also a pioneer, American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln placed Barton in charge of the search for the missing men of the Union Army and she was known as “The Angel of the Battlefield.” -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards worked as a visiting nurse and helped train nurses to work with the mentally ill. At Bellevue, Linda created the first written reporting system for nurses and by 1874 she took over the Boston Training School and turned the program into one of the best nurse training programs in the country. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Hampton Robb was one of the founders of modern American nursing theory and was one of the most important leaders in the history of nursing. In 1889, she was appointed head of the new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she continued to suggest reforms. She is known for her grading policy for nursing students. -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock was a nurse, author, pioneer in nursing education, and social activist. In 1890, she wrote one of the first nursing textbooks which contained information on various drugs. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Mary Adelaide Nutting was an American nurse and educator. Nutting is best remembered for raising the quality of higher education in nursing, hospital administration, and related fields in 1907. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African-American RN in the United States. In 1908 she was cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). -
Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald was a nurse, social worker, public health official, author, teacher, women's rights activist, and the founder of American community of nursing. Wald’s devotion to humanity is recognized around the world and she was also a founder of the NAACP in 1909. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was best known for advocating birth control, in 1912. Sanger gave up nursing work so she could dedicate herself to the distribution of birth control information. She also founded the National Birth Control League which was taken over while she was in Europe. -
Virginia Henderson
Virginia Henderson went to the Army School of Nursing in Washington, D.C. in 1921. She was the first nursing instructor in Virginia and a member of the American Academy of Nursing. -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Warburton Goodrich was the first woman Dean at Yale University in 1923. Dean Goodrich shared the honor of the Yale University school as “one of the first two schools of nursing to be established,” and was considered the first of its genre. -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge formed the Committee for Mothers and Babies in 1925. This evolved into the Frontier Nursing Service and started midwifery work in Leslie County and part of Clay County because they didn’t have physicians. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem received her nursing diploma in the early 1930’s from Providence Hospital School of Nursing, Washington D.C. She came up with the self-care deficit theory, a general theory of nursing, and it is one of the most widely used models in nursing today. -
Hidegard Peplau
Hildegard Peplau worked as an operating room supervisor at Pottstown Hospital in 1931. During World War II in 1939, Hildegard Peplau was a member of the Army Nurse Corps and worked in a neuropsychiatric hospital in London, England. -
Ida V. Moffett
Ida V. Moffett was a lifelong champion of compassionate care. In 1943, she organized Alabama's first unit of the Cadet Nurse Corps, which was established to overcome the shortage of nurses. The Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Sanford University stands as a symbol of her dedication to the field of nursing. -
Lillian Harvey
Lillian Harvey helped the School of Nursing at Tuskegee to become the first to offer a BS degree in nursing in 1948 in Alabama. In 1992, the Nurses Home at Tuskegee was renamed “Lillian” in honor of Dr. Harvey. -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeleine Leininger was the dean of the University of Washington, School of Nursing in 1969. In 1974, she edited 27 books and founded the Journal of Transcultural Nursing. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson is the founder of the original Center for Human Caring. In 1988, her theory of nursing was published in “nursing: human science and human care.” Dr. Watson believes that “the main focus in nursing is on carative factors.”
