Martha E. Rogers Group Study Room

Martha Elizabeth Rogers was born May 12, 1914, in Dallas, Texas, the eldest of four children. She began her collegiate education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she studied science from 1931 to 1933. She received her nursing diploma from Knoxville General Hospital School of Nursing in 1936. In 1937 she received a B.S. from George Peabody College in Nashville. Her other degrees include an M.A. in public health nursing supervision from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1945 and an M.P.H. in 1952 and a Sc.D. in 1954, both from Johns Hopkins University.

For 21 years, from 1954 to 1975, Martha Rogers was a professor and head of the Division of Nursing at New York University. In 1979 she became professor emeritus and was an active member of the nursing profession until her death on March 13, 1994.

Dr. Rogers’ early nursing practice was in rural public health nursing in Michigan and in visiting nurse supervision, education, and practice in Connecticut. She then established the Visiting Nurse Service of Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Rogers’ publications include three books and more than 200 articles; she wrote and published extensively. She lectured in 46 states and around the world.

Dr. Rogers received honorary doctorates in Science, Letters, and Humane Letters from such renowned institutions as Duquesne University, University of San Diego, Iona College, Fairfield University, Mercy College, and Washburn University of Topeka. In addition, Dr. Rogers received numerous awards and citations for her contributions and leadership in nursing, many of which have been established in her name.

The Science of Unitary Human Beings

Dr. Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings is used as a conceptual framework in courses of study. Conceptual models give students a "hook" to which they can hang theories and evolve abstraction.

Dr. Rogers presented her evolutionary model in 1970 with the publication of “An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing.” This view presented a drastic, but attractive way of viewing human interaction and the nursing process. Her concepts are derived from the view of the universe as a collection of open systems of which we interact independently and continuously without causality.