The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is an iterative method used for estimating parameters in statistical models with unobserved latent variables, alternating between an expectation step and a maximization step. It plays a crucial role in various applications, including data clustering, machine learning, and medical imaging, by helping to find maximum likelihood estimates from incomplete data. Developed in a 1977 paper by Dempster, Laird, and Rubin, the algorithm has implications in diverse fields such as psychometrics and structural engineering.