1820-1910. By sheer force of character, Nightingale, born in Florence, Italy, created the movement that led to professional status for nurses. Her career began when she nursed her mother through a terminal illness, but her formal exposure to medicine was a 3 month course at the Institute for Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth, Germany. She took a contingent of nurses to the Crimean War, and her administrative genius and reforms saved thousands of lives. After the war she established the Nightingale School and Home for training nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital in London.