Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985)
[1] was an
African-Americansurgical technicianwho developed the procedures used to treat
blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was the assistant to surgeon
Alfred Blalock in Blalock's experimental animal laboratory at
Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee, and later at the
Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland. He served as supervisor of the surgical laboratories at Johns Hopkins for 35 years. In 1976 Hopkins awarded him an honorary doctorate and named him an instructor of surgery for the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
[2] Without any education past high school, Thomas rose above poverty and racism to become a
cardiac surgery pioneer and a teacher of operative techniques to many of the country's most prominent surgeons.
