Itzhak "Ben" Bentov (also Ben-Tov; Hebrew: יצחק בנטוב; August 9, 1923 – May 25, 1979) was an Israeli American scientist, inventor, mystic and author.

Bentov was killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 shortly after takeoff from Chicago O'Hare Airport in 1979, which remains the worst non-terrorism-related aviation disaster to have taken place on US soil.

[1] In 1967, he built the steerable heart catheter and attracted the attention of businessman John Abele, with whom Bentov founded the Medi-Tech corporation in 1969.

As a result, he was kind of a renaissance person, technologically as well as intellectually.In 1979, Abele and Peter Nicholas looked to grow the successful business and established Boston Scientific as a holding company to purchase Medi-Tech.

In addition to the steerable cardiac catheter, his inventions included diet spaghetti, automobile brake shoes, EKG electrodes and pacemaker leads.

Bentov died on May 25, 1979, as a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 191 that crashed shortly after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

[9] At the time of his death, he was traveling to California where he had been set to present his ideas on science and mysticism to a group of scientists from Japan.