Rune Elmqvist (1906–1996) developed the first implantable

pacemaker An artificial cardiac pacemaker (or artificial pacemaker, so as not to be confused with the natural cardiac pacemaker) or pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to the chambers of the heart eith ...

in 1958, working under the direction of

Åke Senning Åke Senning (* 14 December 1915 in Rättvik, Sweden; † 21 July 2000 in Zurich, Switzerland) was a Swedish cardiac surgeon who worked at Zurich University Hospital from 1961 until his retirement in 1985. Biography Åke Senning was born ...

, senior physician and

cardiac The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...

surgeon In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...

at the

Karolinska University Hospital The Karolinska University Hospital ( sv, Karolinska universitetssjukhuset) is a teaching hospital affiliated with Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, with two major sites in the municipalities of Solna and Huddinge. The hospital network is ...

Solna Solna Municipality ( sv, Solna kommun or , ) is a municipality in Stockholm County in Sweden, located just north of Stockholm City Centre. Its seat is located in the town of Solna, which is a part of the Stockholm urban area. Solna is one of t ...

, Sweden. Elmqvist initially worked as a

medical doctor A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

(having trained in

Lund Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...

), but later worked as an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

. In 1948, he developed the first

inkjet Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpensi ...

ECG Electrocardiography is the process of producing an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), a recording of the heart's electrical activity. It is an electrogram of the heart which is a graph of voltage versus time of the electrical activity of the hear ...

printer which he called the mingograph while working at Elema-Schönander, a company which later became

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

-Elema. In 1957, he received an honorary

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

. In 1960, he became head of development at Elema-Schönander. Siemens-Elema's pacemaker operations were sold to the American company

Pacesetter Systems Pacesetter Systems Inc. was a biotechnology company founded by Alfred E. Mann in 1965. The company manufactured various implantable medical devices invented by Robert Fischell and the rest of the team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics ...

in 1994, which was subsequently sold to

St Jude Medical St. Jude Medical, Inc. was an American global medical device company headquartered in Little Canada, Minnesota, U.S., a suburb of Saint Paul. The company had more than 20 principal operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide with products s ...

References

1906 births 1996 deaths 20th-century Swedish inventors Lund University alumni Swedish cardiac surgeons 20th-century surgeons {{Sweden-med-bio-stub