Vivien Thomas, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Vivien Thomas

American surgeon

Date of Birth: 29-Aug-1910

Place of Birth: New Iberia, Louisiana, United States

Date of Death: 26-Nov-1985

Profession: physician, cardiac surgeon

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985) was an African-American laboratory supervisor who developed a procedure used to treat blue baby syndrome (now known as cyanotic heart disease) 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.
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. A PBS documentary Partners of the Heart, was broadcast in 2003 on PBS's American Experience.
In the 2004 HBO movie, Something the Lord Made, Vivien Thomas was portrayed by Mos Def.