Mr. Bakken and his brother-in-law Palmer Hermundslie founded the company in 1949. Mr. Bakken served as the head of Medtronic for 40 years.
In 1958, Mr. Bakken was asked by a heart surgeon at the Minneapolis-based University of Minnesota to create a battery-powered pacemaker to keep babies with irregular heartbeats alive. Mr. Bakken commercialized the first implantable pacemaker in 1960, according to the report.
“Earl was a true pioneer in healthcare and his vision of using technology to help people still inspires us today. We are privileged to continue the work that he started over 60 years ago and we remain fully committed to all six tenets of the Mission that he crafted so many years ago,” Medtronic Chairman and CEO Omar Ishrak said in a statement on the company’s website.
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