Yvonne Thornton

Yvonne S. Thornton, born in 1947, is an American obstetrician-gynecologist, musician and author who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine. Born in New York City and raised in Long Branch, New Jersey, she graduated from Monmouth University and trained at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She served in the United States Navy Medical Corps from 1979 to 1982 as an obstetrician-gynecologist, later earned a master of public health at Columbia, and became professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell Medical College in 2003, and later professor emeritus at New York Medical College. She became the first African American woman in the United States to be board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine. Her clinical research is linked to chorionic villus sampling for early prenatal diagnosis and to the care of obese pregnant women. She wrote The Ditchdigger's Daughters, a memoir adapted for television in 1997, and played in a family jazz and rhythm-and-blues band as a girl.