It’s surely right that the new emergency field hospital opened in London in the Excel Centre has been called “Nightingale”. Florence Nightingale is just about the most recognisable name in British medical history. “Nightingale” evokes a beautiful songbird, but Florence very nearly didn’t bear that surname at all. Her father’s family name had been “Shore”, but he changed it when he became heir to a relation who wished the “Nightingale” link to continue. Her then unusual Christian name was given her because she was born in Florence – in May 1820 – while her parents were on the Grand Tour of Europe. Florence benefitted from a well-to-do background: but there were other aspects of her life that were formative (according to her most recent biographer, Mark Bostridge). Her parents believed in education for women. Her religious beliefs were strong and drove her on – she considered becoming an Anglican nun, or Lutheran deaconess. Nursing attracted her because she longed to have something meaningful to do – though she had been inclined to nurse “sick” dolls as a child, and once bound up a puppy’s injured paw. The Crimean war gave Florence the opportunity to launch her nursing career: she took both Anglican and Catholic nursing nuns with her to Scutari. The French Sisters of Charity had been the original pioneers of nursing on the battlefield. She entered into legend as “the Lady with the Lamp” but her lasting achievement was to reform, even revolutionise, the nursing profession. Nurses had previously had low status – Dickens’s drunken, squalid Sarah Gamp was seen as typical – until Miss Nightingale insisted on standards of medical care, hygiene and education. Recently, the Scots-Caribbean nurse Mary Seacole had been upheld as a more diverse and multicultural Crimean figure than the “white and privileged” Florence. Mrs Seacole had indeed been unfairly forgotten and she was a pioneering and heroic figure – especially in nursing cholera victims – and deservedly now has her own statue at St Thomas’s Hospital London. Both were surely remarkable women. Nightingale was also an accomplished mathematician, popularised the “pie chart”, and wrote a novel. Her centenary will be marked next month so it’s fitting that the special pandemic hospital should be named for her now.