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Episode details

Radio 4,18 May 2016,28 mins

Florence Nightingale: Statistician

Science Stories

Available for over a year

Naomi Alderman tells a little-known story about a rather well-known nurse. Florence Nightingale is famous for mopping the brows of sick and wounded soldiers during the Crimean war. Generations of Nightingale Nurses are named after her. But according to her sister Parthenope: 'she was a shocking nurse'. She was the lady of the lamp but the light she cast wasn't the light of the nurse's lantern; it was the light of statistics. This is the story of Florence Nightingale, the intellectual pioneer and revered statistician.

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