Erik Furholmen (1896-1963) was a Norwegian-American engineer, teacher and entrepreneur.

Born in Oslo, Norway, Erik Furholmen emigrated in 1905 with the rest of his family to the United States. In school he followed in the footsteps of several others in his family by studying engineering. His formal education included engineering at the University of Minnesota and toolmaking at Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis.

He began his toolmaking career with H. E. Wilcox Motor Co. in Minneapolis, where he was a machinist, tool designer and tool maker, eventually becoming assistant to the superintendent. In 1920 he went to Chicago to work in the Machine Design Division of Jos. T. Ryerson & Co.

In 1924 he returned to Minneapolis where he became chief draftsman for Minneapolis Honeywell Co., and in 1930 he was assigned to develop their new plastics engineering department. From 1938 to 1944 he was Chief Estimating Engineer for Chicago Molded Products Co. in Chicago, Illinois. During World War II he was also an instructor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he taught evening classes in Elementary Plastics Engineering and Plastics Production and Fabrication.

From 1944 to 1946 Furholmen was Works Manager and Chief Engineer, first with Cincinnati Advertising Products and then with Superior Plastics in Chicago.

Furholmen was a speaker at a number of technical society meetings and authored technical articles regarding plastics engineering that appeared in national trade magazines such as Modern Plastics and Machinery. He contributed a chapter to Herbert Chase's book Handbook on Designing for Quantity Production, two editions of which were published by McGraw Hill (1944 and 1950).

In 1947, Furholmen and Norman Nelson formed a partnership to start their own company, Furnel, in Chicago. The company specialized in product development, tooling and production with the emphasis on plastics. Furnel, Inc. continued after Nelson's departure in 1952, and Furholmen continued his plastics engineering work until his death in 1963