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Dorothea Dix
Dix was an activist for the founding of mental asylums. She was also the Nursing Superintendent for the Union forces during the Civil War. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Bickerdyke was an administrator for the Union soldiers in the Civil War. She was also was known as “Mother Bickerdkye” because of her great concern for the Union troops. -
Clara Barton
Barton organized the American Red Cross. She also established an agency to distribute supplies to wounded soldiers during the Battle of Bull Run. -
Linda Richards
Richards is the first professionally trained American nurse. She set up training programs in Japan and the United States, and she set up the system for individual medical records. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mahoney is the first African American to work as a professional nurse. She also co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. -
Lavinia Dock
Dock was an advocate for entry and equality to healthcare. She was lobbied for the control of nursing practices. Dock also was an author of nursing textbooks. -
Mary A. Nutting
Nutting was an educational activist She was also the first professor of Nursing. -
Isabel H. Robb
Robb is the co-founder of the Modern American Nursing Theory. She is also the author of Nursing Ethics (1900) and Educational Standards for Nurses (1907). -
Annie Goodrich
Goodrich was the first Dean and Professor at Yale School of Nursing in 1923. She was also an educational activist and held multiple international nursing positions -
Lillian Wald
Wald was a humanitarian, a social worker, and an activist. She was a co-founder of the NAACP. Wald taught nursing classes for women inside her home in New York. -
Margaret Sanger
Sanger was an activist for birth control. She founded the American Birth Control League (1921). -
Mary Breckinridge
Breckinridge is the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. She also was a pioneer and a successful midwife. -
Virginia Henderson
Henderson was the first full-time nursing instructor in Virginia. She also defined nursing as: “The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery.” -
Ida V. Moffett
Moffett is an Alabamian nurse. She also was a pioneer in establishing the first Nursing School in Alabama in 1955. -
Hildegard Peplau
Peplau established the nurse-client relationship in her book Interpersonal Relations in Nursing (1952). -
Dorothea Orem
Orem is the founder of Self Care Deficit Nursing Theory (1959). This theory states that nurses have to supply help to patients, when patients are unable to help themselves. -
Martha Rogers
Rogers was and educational activist. She developed the Science of Unitary Human Beings, and she is also the author of An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing (1989). -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Harvey is the founder of the first baccalaureate nursing program in Alabama (1948). She also served as the Dean of Nursing at Tuskegee University. -
Madeleine Leninger
Leninger developed the concept of Trans-cultural nursing. She also discussed what it actually means to care for patients. -
Jean Watson
Watson is the creator of the Theory of Human Caring (1979). She also coined the famous saying: “It’s the surgeon who saves a person’s life…it’s the nurse who helps the person live.
