this visionary who introduced a new worldview to
nursing?
Martha Elizabeth Rogers was born in Dallas,
Texas, on May 12, 1914, a birthday she shared with
Florence Nightingale. Her parents soon returned
home to Knoxville, Tennessee, where Martha and
her three siblings grew up.
Rogers spent two years at the University of
Tennessee in Knoxville before entering the nursing
program at Knoxville General Hospital. Next, she
attended George Peabody College in Nashville,
Tennessee, where she earned her bachelor of sci-
ence degree in public health nursing, choosing that
field as her professional focus.
Rogers spent the next 13 years in rural public
health nursing in Michigan, Connecticut, and
Arizona, where she established the first Visiting
Nurse Service in Phoenix, serving as its executive
director (Hektor, 1989, 1994). Recognizing the
need for advanced education, she took a break dur-
ing this period and returned to academia, earning
her master’s degree in nursing from Teachers
College, Columbia University, in the program de-
veloped by another nurse theorist, Hildegard
Peplau. In 1951, she returned to academia, this time
earning a master’s of public health and a doctor of
science degree from Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1954 Rogers was appointed head of the
Division of Nursing at New York University (NYU),
beginning the second phase of her career oversee-
ing baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral programs
in nursing and developing the nursing science she
knew was integral to the knowledge base nurses
needed. She articulated the need for a “valid bac-
calaureate education” that would serve as the base
for graduate and doctoral studies in nursing. Such
a program, she believed, required five years of study
in theoretical content in nursing as well as liberal
arts and the biological, physical, and social sciences.
Under her leadership, NYU established such a pro-
gram. At the doctoral level, Rogers opposed the
federally funded nurse-scientist doctoral programs
that prepared nurses in other disciplines rather
than in the science of nursing. During the 1960s she
successfully shifted the focus of doctoral research
from nurses and their functions to human beings in
mutual process with the environment. She wrote
three books that explicated her ideas:Educational
Revolution in Nursing(1961),Reveille in Nursing
(1964), and the landmark An Introduction to the
Theoretical Basis of Nursing(1970). From 1963 to
1965 she edited Nursing Science,a journal that was
far ahead of its time; this journal offered content on
theory development and the emerging science of
nursing plus research and issues in education and
practice.
Along with a number of nursing colleagues,
Rogers established the Society for Advancement in
Nursing in 1974. Among other issues, this group
supported differentiation in education and practice
for professional and technical careers in nursing.
They drafted legislation to amend the Education
Law in New York State proposing licensure as an in-
dependent nurse (IN) for those who had a mini-
mum of a baccalaureate degree. It also introduced a
new exam and licensure as a registered nurse (RN)
for those with either a diploma or an associate de-
gree in nursing who passed the traditional boards
(Governing Council of the Society for Advance-
ment in Nursing, 1977, 1994).
Rogers is best remembered for the paradigm she
introduced to nursing, the science of unitary
human beings, which displays her visionary, future-
oriented perspective. Her theoretical ideas ap-
peared in embryonic form in her two earlier books
and were fleshed out in the 1970a book, then re-
vised and refined in a number of articles and book
chapters written between 1980 and 1994. She
helped create the Society of Rogerian Scholars, Inc.,
chartered in New York in 1988, as one avenue for
furthering the development of this nursing science.
Rogers died in 1994, leaving a rich legacy in her
writings on nursing science, the space age, research,
education, and professional and political issues in
nursing.Introducing the Theory
The historical evolution of the Science of Unitary
Human Beings has been described by Malinski and
Barrett (1994). This chapter presents the science in
its current form and identifies work in progress to
expand it further.ROGERS’ WORLDVIEW
Rogers (1994a) identified the unique focus of
nursing as “the irreducible human being and itsCHAPTER 13 Martha E. Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings 161