[5] Victor Margolin was born in 1941 in New York City and at a young age the family moved to Washington, D.C., where he grew up.
Following his return to the United States, he worked briefly for the National Broadcasting Company in Washington D.C. and for the public television station, WETA.
In 1975, he moved to Chicago where he held several jobs in college and university administration before obtaining a PhD in design history from the Union Graduate School, a non-traditional institution based in Cincinnati.
[12] In the 2000s Margolin began work on a magnum opus, a comprehensive three-volume World History of Design with an international and multi-cultural perspective.
Margolin was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the organizers of the LearnXDesign conference in Chicago in 2015, for his 'exemplary contributions to design history, research, education and practice'[15] and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Design Research Society in 2016.
[16] Victor Margolin died on November 27, 2019, in Washington, D.C., due to complications from a spinal cord injury and dementia.