Nurses and pioneers: the nursing staff and permanent teacher at the opening of the International School of nursing Education in Lyon in 1965

On the initiative of the World health organization, the international School of nursing university education opens in Lyon on September the 6th, 1965 and closes 30 years later. After having approached the national and international context of this creation, the study, based on archives and contemporary printed sources and various interviews of living witnesses, boarding and teaching, only-female staff present at the opening of the School, shows that it's all about pioneers and activists to the nursing cause, each of them doing it her own way. The background, the training, the personality, the educational choices and the publications of most of them give evidence of their will to contribute actively to the development and valuation of nursing as a discipline without naming it, by being inspired by foreign experiences well ahead of the french situation at the time. Good intentions to confront with the complex reality of the stakes and games of the numerous actors involved in those years realization.