Thomas Dolan was an American engineer who proposed the first fully developed concept of Lunar orbit rendezvous for the Apollo program while working at Vought Astronautics.
The lander's ascent stage would then be left behind in orbit, and the crew would return to Earth in the Command/Service Module.
While this method saved a lot of weight in propellant and spacecraft mass, it did not gain widespread acceptance early on.
The Gemini missions would later prove that rendezvous and docking was indeed possible in space, paving the way for Dolan's idea to be put into practice.
In the fifth episode of the 1998 HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, entitled "Spider", Tom Dolan is portrayed by Alan Ruck.