Virginia Henderson (1897–1996)

Virginia Henderson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the fifth of eight children of Lucy Minor Abbot and Daniel B. Henderson. She received her early education at home and at a prep school in Virginia owned by her grandfather. In 1921, she graduated from the Army School of Nursing at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. She then worked at the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service in New York City for two years. In 1923, she started teaching nursing at the Norfolk Protestant Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, where she became educational director. In 1930, she was a nurse supervisor and clinical instructor at the outpatient department of Strong Memorial Hospital, in Rochester, New York. In 1932, she earned her bachelor’s degree and in 1934 her master’s degree in Nursing Education, both from Teachers College at Columbia University. She stayed on at Teachers College as a faculty member until 1948. After 1953, Henderson served as a research associate at the Yale University School of Nursing.

During her 50-year career, she was the author of five widely-used textbooks on nursing theory and practice that helped shaped the field of modern nursing. The first of these was Principles and Practices of Nursing, published in 1939. In 1985, she was awarded the first Christianne Reimann Prize from the International Council of Nurses. She was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in the UK.