Margaret Hart was born in 1915 in Salinas, California. Her father, Fred Hart, a proponent of electronic medicine and an innovator, received patents for the Oscilloclast and other treatment devices. He volunteered at the Electronic Medical Foundation, eventually becoming president of the College of Electronic Medicine in San Francisco. After a ten-year battle with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the validity of treatment with electronic frequencies, the Foundation was dissolved. Fred Hart's other enterprises included running for state senator and establishing the first radio station in San Jose, KQW.

Throughout her lifetime, Margaret maintained her interest in the agriculture business of the Salinas Valley, overseeing the rich farmland that had been in her family for generations. She also observed and recorded her father's therapeutic methods and inherited his collection of Oscilloclasts and other devices. Events in Margaret's childhood contributed to her later interest in applying contemporary engineering technology to the original instrumentation developed by her father.

Margaret graduated from Stanford University in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in education. She studied voice under Andres de Segurola in Hollywood and Lucy Valpey in Carmel. Throughout her life she contributed to many public events as a soloist, appearing on radio, television and before charity groups and conventions. She was guest soloist at many seminars led by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in New York. Margaret married Gordon Packard, an executive with IBM, in 1960; Packard died in 1970.

Margaret was a member of the board of trustees of Golden Gate University in San Francisco, Eastern Baptist College and Eastern Baptist Seminary in Pennsylvania, Judson College in Elgin, Illinois, First Baptist Church in Menlo Park and American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, California. She was an active member of the First Baptist Church in Salinas where her grandfather, Robert Porter, was a founding member. She received an honorary degree from Judson College. In 1988, the Surbeck Auditorium (named for Margaret and Homer) at Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's School of Practical Christianity in Pawling, New York, was dedicated.

Margaret's second marriage in 1976 to Leighton Homer Surbeck led to a shared commitment to further investigate the potential of electromagnetic radiation therapy. Leighton Homer Surbeck, had a 50-year career as a trial lawyer and an expert on antitrust law. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, he graduated from Yale Law School where he ranked first in his class. He served as law secretary to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft and then entered the law firm of Charles Evans Hughes, later Chief Justice of the United States. He was a founding partner of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed in New York City. During World War II, Surbeck was a Colonel and Chief of the Economic Branch, Military Intelligence Service, War Department.

Leighton Homer Surbeck was a recipient of a number of awards and honors, including membership in the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, and the Yale Medal in 1974. In 1963, the Surbeck Student Union at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology was named in his honor. Leighton Homer Surbeck died in 1997 at the age of 94.

After Margaret Surbeck's death in 2000, her will established INDNJC, Inc., to fund health-related research. INDNJC, Inc. endowed the Margaret Hart Surbeck Program in Advanced Imaging at UCSF in 2002.