Born in 1820, Florence Nightingale would consider religion a central part of her life from an early age. Her father was a Unitarian who was active in the period's anti-slavery movement. Religion became particularly important to Nightingale in her late teens as she contemplated her future. Attributing her path to a divine calling, she set out on a life of healing and activism that would sear itself into the pages of history. At the center of this life was a sense that hers was a mission, a vocation to help others.
With her entry into military events, professional communities and the field of health, Nightingale also entered circles previously dominated by men. Challenging conceived gender barriers was as much an act of a feminism as it was an act of religious conviction. Nightingale railed against the exclusion of women from career opportunities, especially in her 1859 publication "Suggestions for Thought to Searchers After Religious Truths."
In her 90 years, Nightingale treated men on the battlefields of the Crimean War, sought to improve the hygienic conditions of military hospitals, actively fought pieces of legislation and advised Queen Victoria as to how best to improve the health conditions of the empire's soldiery. She published at least two volumes on nursing, raised nearly 60,000 pounds for the nursing field and, even during retirement, she continued to write down notes and observances. She even offered to sail to India when the bloody mutiny of 1857 erupted.
Nightingale was superbly educated. Having no male children, her father lavished her with the education usually reserved for sons. By the time she was in her early 30s, Nightingale studied nursing at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses in Germany. Her father instructed her not only in German but in French, Greek, Italian and Latin in addition to philosophy and math. Her writing on the abilities and condition were so powerful that they even influenced the writings of famed liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill. He would later incorporate related ideas in his own work, the 1869 "The Subjection of Women."