Earl Bakken

Earl Bakken was an American engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Medtronic and developed the first wearable, battery-powered external pacemaker. Working from a garage repair shop for hospital electronic equipment, he built the transistorized pacemaker in 1957 at the request of surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, replacing bulky AC-powered pacemakers with a compact device a patient could wear, which greatly reduced the risk to heart-surgery patients and helped launch the modern medical device industry. Under his leadership Medtronic grew into one of the world's largest medical technology companies, and Bakken remained an advocate for engineering-driven innovation in healthcare throughout his life. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/