The Danaher Corporation is an American company with its headquarters in Washington, D.C., United States. Its products are concentrated in the fields of design, manufacturing, and marketing of industrial and consumer products. It operates in Five segments: Test & Measurement, Dental, Industrial Technologies, Environmental, and Life Science & Diagnostics.

The company was organized in 1969. It was formerly known as DMG, Inc., and changed its name to Diversified Mortgage Investors, Inc., in 1978, then to Danaher Corporation in 1984. In June 1986, Danaher purchased Chicago Pneumatic ("CP") who had just recently merged in July 1984 with a sister company The Jacobs Manufacturing Company ("Jacobs") and who had purchased Matco Tools Corporation ("MTC") in April 1981. Danaher sold CP in June 1987, retaining Jacobs, including its Matco Tools Division. Jacobs' name was changed to Matco Tools Corporation in November 1991, and the other divisions within Jacobs were established as separate operating companies. In January 1993, Danaher formed NMTC, Inc., which acquired a substantial portion of the assets of MTC, including the existing distributorship agreements of MTC.

The company is named after Danaher Creek in Montana where the Rales brothers, Steven and Mitchell, went fishing.

Within two years of Danaher Corporation's founding in 1984, Danaher Corporation acquired 12 companies as part of a strategy to enter the manufacturing business. Therefore, in 1986 Danaher added Qualitrol to its instrumentation unit. The unit also included Gilbarco Veeder-Root's underground fuel storage sensors, Dynapar's motion sensors and Qualitrol's pressure and temperature measurement instruments, used on the electrical transformer industry.

The Danaher Motion group acquired Kollmorgen, of Radford, Virginia.

UK-based West Instruments provides control and measurement instrumentation solutions and services for the global industrial and process markets. German instrumentation manufacturer PMA was added to the Industrial Controls Group in 2005 and enhances the range of control and measurement instrumentation solutions.

In July 2005, Danaher Announces Definitive Agreement To Acquire Leica Microsystems. The company manufactures a broad range of products for numerous applications requiring microscopic imaging, measurement and analysis. It also offers system solutions in the areas of Life Science including biotechnology and medicine, as well as the science of raw materials and industrial quality assurance.

In early 2007 Danaher acquired Australian Pathology Instrument and Engineering company Vision Systems Limited. Also in 2007, Danaher made its largest acquisition to date, the purchase of Tektronix, Inc. for 2.85 billion USD.

In 2009 Danaher purchased the Analytical Technologies business unit of Canadian Life Sciences company MDS, Inc. for $650 million USD. In a separate, but related transaction, Danaher agreed with Life Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: LIFE) to acquire the remaining 50% ownership position in AB SCIEX for $450 million USD, leaving Danaher as outright owner of AB SCIEX and Molecular Devices. The aggregate purchase price for the combined transactions is $1.1 billion.

In 2011 Danaher entered into a definitive merger agreement with Beckman Coulter and sold Accu-sort to Datalogic.

In October 2012, Danaher Corporation and Cooper Industries agreed to sell their joint venture, Apex Tool Group, to Bain Capital for a fee of around $1.6 billion. In December 2012 Danaher Corporation acquired Navman Wireless, a provider of on-demand fleet and asset management technology.

In September 2014, Danaher Corp announced its intention to buy Nobel Biocare for $2.2 billion. In October 2014, Danaher Corp announced it would be combining its communications unit with NetScout Systems. The action was completed in July 2015

In May 2015, Danaher Corp announced the acquisition of Pall for $13.8 billion. Acquisition was completed August 2015

In June 2016, Danaher spun off several subsidiaries, including Matco and AMMCO-COATS, to create Fortive. In September of the same year, the company announced it would acquire Cepheid for $4 billion (including debt).

in 2016 October, Danaher Corporation acquired Phenomenex for $700 million to expand in life sciences space.

Other Brands (Note: As of July 2016, some of these are now part of Fortive)