[2] Shortly after her mother's death, Florence and her sister (Mary) moved in with their Uncle Albert in Chicago before relocating to Vermont with their paternal grandparents.
Uncle Albert was a tremendous influence on Florence, and from her relationship with him, she developed a love of nature and a keen interest in books and music.
Florence's father had always wanted to be a doctor, but the obligations of mining overwhelmed him, and his thoughts of a medical career slowly disappeared.
Mall inspired Sabin by helping narrow her focus onto two projects well regarded by scientists[5] and foundational to her future research and consequent legacy.
The first project was to produce a three-dimensional model of a newborn baby's brain stem which became the focus of the textbook, An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain (1901).
[2] Upon graduation, Sabin obtained an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital under physician Sir William Osler.
Following a one-year internship with Osler, she won a research fellowship in the Department of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where she continued to work with Mall.
In September 1925 she became head of the department of cellular studies at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City.
Sabin spent her final years at the institute determining the effects imposed by foreign substances and their consequent formation of antibodies.
[3]After six years of quiet retirement, Sabin accepted Colorado Governor John Vivian's request to chair a subcommittee on health beginning in 1944.
Knowing that health care legislation had been voted down consistently in the past due to uninterested politicians, she was relentless in her demand for reform.
While she was in her early seventies, Sabin refused to let a snowstorm prevent her from making it to a speech in support of her cause despite public travel concerns.