Vivien Thomas
Surgeon, Film subject
1910 – 1985
Who was Vivien Thomas?
Vivien Theodore Thomas was an African-American surgical technician who developed the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was an 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. 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. Vivien Thomas was the first African American without a doctorate to perform open heart surgery on a white patient in the United States.
There is a television film based on his life entitled Something The Lord Made and it premiered in May 2004 on HBO.
We need you!
Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!
Citation
Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Vivien Thomas." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/vivien_thomas>.
Discuss this Vivien Thomas biography with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In