Two months after Medtronic co-founder Earl Bakken's death, the company's CEO Omar Ishrak and previous CEOs gathered with hundreds of mourners for the late innovator's memorial service at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, according to the Star Tribune.
Mr. Bakken, who died in October at the age of 94, is credited with building the first battery-powered portable pacemaker. He started Medtronic in 1949 out of a family garage near the University of Minnesota. Today, the company has approximately 86,000 employees and is one of the largest medical device manufacturers in the world.
The memorial service featured three former Medtronic CEOs as speakers in addition to Mr. Ishrak. Members of Mr. Bakken's extended family, company employees and members from the original Medtronic team who worked in the garage attended the event.
"[Mr. Bakken] was an entrepreneur, he was an innovator, and a passionate and generous philanthropist. He was also a visionary who never stopped seeking to benefit humankind," Mr. Ishrak said, according to the report.
In 1995, Mr. Bakken was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame. The University of Minnesota named two centers after him, one focused on medical devices and the other on spirituality and healing.