Vivien Thomas

Vivien Theodore Thomas (born August 29, 1910, died November 26, 1985) - an African-American surgical technician who discovered the methods used to treat the so-called the blue baby syndrome (now known as the tetralogy of Fallot) in the 1940s. He was assistant to the surgeon Alfred Blalock during laboratory animal experiments at Vanderbilt University in Nashiville, Tennessee, and later at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Together with Blalock and dr Helen Taussig he created the so-called the Blalock-Taussig fusion (as a black technician Thomas could not count on placing his name in the name), which was used during the procedure of fusion of the subclavian artery to the pulmonary artery. He worked as a head of surgical laboratories at Hopkins University for 35 years. In 1976 he received the honorary doctor's degree from the same university and the position of a surgical instructor at the university's medical school. Thomas, having completed secondary school only, became a pioneer of cardiac surgery in the times of racism and a teacher of operational techniques used all over the world.

In the film produced by HBO in 2004, Something the Lord Made, Vivien Thomas played the Mos Def. Bibliography

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