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Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985) was an 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. Thomas was unique in which he did not have any professional education or experience in a research laboratory; however, 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.

Relations with Blalock

Vivien Thomas felt nervous when he first met Dr. Alfred Blalock because his friend, Charles Manlove, made it apparent that many people have a hard time working with him. However, Thomas felt as if Dr. Blalock was pleasant, relaxed, and informal during his interview which provided excitement and comfort. Thomas quickly learned that Blalock moved quickly and expected his technicians to also be just as efficient. As Blalock performed experiments daily, Thomas observed thoroughly so that he would be able to recreate the steps when Blalock had other responsibilities to attend to. On the contrary, there were times where Blalock would lose his temper and use obscene profanity; this often bothered Thomas, and almost threatened their stable working relationship.

During Thomas' time working at Vanderbilt in the lab, he struggled with his salary because he needed to be able to provide for himself, but he also was saving up to go back to school. After many encounters with Blalock about a pay raise and no results, Thomas was going to return to his old job as a carpenter. However, Blalock saw Thomas as a valuable asset and did everything he could to keep Thomas from leaving. Blalock's approach to the issue of Thomas's race was complicated and contradictory throughout their 34-year partnership. On the one hand, he defended his choice of Thomas to his superiors at Vanderbilt and to Hopkins colleagues, and he insisted that Thomas accompany him in the operating room during the first series of tetralogy operations. On the other hand, there were limits to his tolerance, especially when it came to issues of pay, academic acknowledgment, and his social interaction outside of work. Tension with Blalock continued to build when he failed to recognize the contributions that Thomas had made in the world-famous blue baby procedure, which led to a rift in their relationship. Thomas was absent in official articles about the procedure, as well as in team pictures that included all of the doctors involved in the procedure.

After Blalock's death from cancer in 1964 at the age of 65, Thomas stayed at Hopkins for 15 more years. In his role as director of Surgical Research Laboratories, he mentored a number of African-American lab assistants as well as Hopkins' first black cardiac resident, Levi Watkins, Jr., whom Thomas assisted with his groundbreaking work in the use of the automatic implantable defibrillator.

Thomas' nephew, Koco Eaton, graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, trained by many of the physicians his uncle had trained. Eaton trained in orthopedics and is now the team doctor for the Tampa Bay Rays.