Earl Elmer Bakken was an American engineer, businessman and philanthropist of Dutch and Norwegian American ancestry. He founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.

Medtronic plc is an Irish medical device company. The company's operational and executive headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its legal headquarters are in Ireland due to its acquisition of Irish-based Covidien in 2015. While it primarily operates in the United States, it operates in more than 150 countries and employs over 90,000 people. It develops and manufactures healthcare technologies and therapies.