Vivien Thomas

Vivien Thomas developed the surgical technique that saved thousands of "blue babies" — infants dying from a heart defect that starved their blood of oxygen. He did this without a medical degree, without a college degree, working as a lab technician at Johns Hopkins while being classified and paid as a janitor.

Thomas partnered with Dr. Alfred Blalock to develop the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt in 1944. On the day of the first surgery, Thomas stood behind Blalock coaching him through every step of the procedure he had perfected on over two hundred laboratory operations.

For decades, Thomas received no public credit. He trained a generation of surgeons at Johns Hopkins — many of whom became chiefs of surgery at major hospitals — while earning a fraction of their salaries. In 1976, Johns Hopkins finally awarded him an honorary doctorate, and his portrait now hangs next to Blalock's.