An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents (1993) [pdf]

The faulty code was written by a single person, whose name has never to my knowledge been known publicly. I've often wondered whether they are still writing software and what industry they're in now.

Obviously the Therac-25 accidents were not entirely this person's fault — the product was manufactured by AECL, a large company with management who should have demanded better testing and made better design decisions, like hardware interlocks.

But I still wonder who it was.

Leveson, in a sidebar, says

The programmer left AECL in 1986. In a lawsuit connected with one of the accidents, the lawyers were unable to obtain information about the programmer from AECL. In the depositions connected with that case, none of the AECL employees questioned could provide any information about his educational background or experience. Although an attempt was made to obtain a deposition from the programmer, the lawsuit was settled before this was accomplished. We have been unable to learn anything about his background.