Earl Ethan Bakken (January 10, 1924 – October 21, 2018) was an American engineer, businessman and philanthropist. He founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.
Bakken retired from Medtronic in 1989 and moved to a 9-acre estate in the Kona District of Hawaii he calls Bakken Hale.
Bakken died at his Hawaii home on October 21, 2018 at the age of 94.