Rune Elmqvist was born on December 1, 1906, and died on December 15, 1996. He was a Swedish doctor who later became an engineer. He helped create the first implantable pacemaker in 1958. He worked under the guidance of Åke Senning, a senior doctor and heart surgeon at Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, Sweden.

Elmqvist was born in Lund, Sweden. He earned his medical degree (MD) in 1939. He first worked as a doctor, trained in Lund, but later became an engineer and inventor. In 1927, he created an electronic device called a potentiometer to measure pH levels. In 1931, he developed a multichannel electrocardiograph, a machine that records heart activity. In 1940, he joined Elema-Schönander, an electronics company that later became Siemens-Elema. In 1948, while working at Elema-Schönander, he invented the first inkjet ECG printer, which he named the mingograph.

The first pacemaker was developed in the 1950s. Dr. Senning tested it on a patient named Arne Larsson at the request of the patient’s wife. The pacemaker was implanted in a surgery on October 8, 1958. It used a single transistor to produce 2 volts of electricity in 1.5-millisecond intervals, creating 70 heartbeats per minute. The first pacemaker worked for only three hours and needed replacement. A second version lasted six weeks. The earliest pacemaker was made with Araldite epoxy, a type of glue that is safe inside the body, and placed in a container similar to a Kiwi shoe polish bottle.

Arne Larsson required nearly 30 pacemakers during his lifetime. He lived until 2001, outliving both Elmqvist and Dr. Senning, who died in 2000. In 1957, Elmqvist received an honorary doctorate. In 1976, he was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Academy of Technology and Science of Sweden.

In 1960, Elmqvist became head of development at Elema-Schönander. In 1994, Siemens-Elema sold its pacemaker operations to an American company called Pacesetter Systems. Pacesetter Systems was later sold to St. Jude Medical in Minnesota. His son, Hakan Elmqvist, became a professor of medical technology at the Karolinska Institute.