For VUMC, modern cardiac surgery began in 1971, when the institution recruited three pivotal figures: Harvey Bender, MD, to ...

High-school-educated Vivien Thomas spent decades as a research assistant to renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Alfred Blalock. Yet Thomas made up for his lack of pedigree with talent.

The year was 1925, and Alfred Blalock was already a failure at age 26. The born-and-raised Georgian earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia in 1918, then a medical doctorate ...

ALFRED BLALOCK, M.D. (from text of speech): "The sky was never so blue, and the grass so green as they are this day for me. These are my sentiments tonight." NARRATOR: More than 500 people were ...

The year was 1925, and Alfred Blalock was already a failure at age 26. The born-and-raised Georgian earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia in 1918, then a medical doctorate from ...

Adviser: Vivien Thomas helped Dr. Alfred Blalock and Dr. Helen Taussig develop the ‘blue baby’ operation. Vivien T. Thomas, who was born in New Iberia, La., and raised in Nashville, Tenn., had ...

That Vivien Thomas, a black man with neither a college nor a medical degree, could have worked as a research assistant at Hopkins Hospital during the 1940s was in itself something of a minor miracle.

His job classification was janitor, but he quickly became the trusted assistant to the temperamental, ambitious surgeon Alfred Blalock, 32. Despite their different backgrounds, ...

Dr. Alfred Blalock, a brash, egotistical Georgia native who in 1943 was named head of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, changed that. But he wasn’t alone.

The bond between a white surgeon and a black lab technician is recounted in 'Something the Lord Made' on HBO.