2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait, Florence Nightingale

Issued to mark the centenary of Florence Nightingale's death and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Notes on Nursing, this coin appeared in the same year the World Health Organization was drawing global attention to nursing shortages — an awkward coincidence the Royal Mint did not advertise. Nightingale's statistical innovations, particularly her pioneering use of polar area diagrams to persuade Parliament on hospital mortality, are rarely acknowledged in commemorative contexts, which tend to flatten her into a lamp-carrying symbol rather than the data-driven reformer she actually was.