Categories: Arts & Culture | Innovation, Change & Creativity | Best-selling Authors
Travels from Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Richard Saul Wurman is a visionary creator and the founder of TED, the online conference platform that brings together the brightest minds on the planet under the motto “Ideas Worth Sharing,”
Author, designer and TED Conference creator Richard Saul Wurman has been shaped by an epiphany he had as a young man: spurred by the dance between his curiosity and ignorance, he has sought ways to make the complex clear.
A 1959 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors, B.Arch / M.Arch, Richard Saul Wurman’s career has included 13 years in an architectural partnership, serving as a Director of GEE! Group for Environmental Education, teaching at Cambridge University, CCNY, UCLA, USC, Washington University, St. Louis and Princeton University.
Richard Saul Wurman chaired the 1972 IDCA Conference, the first Federal Design assembly in 1973 and the AIA Conference and the Architecture of Information in 1976. In 1984 he created the now legendary TED Conference, which brought together many of America’s clearest thinkers in the fields of technology, entertainment and design. He chaired every TED Conference through 2002, created the eg Conference, and continues to co-chair the annual TEDMED meetings.
Richard Saul Wurman has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Graham Fellowships and two Chandler Fellowships, was named a Fellow of the AIA in 1976, received the Chrysler Design Award in 1996, was named to the ADC Hall of Fame in 2003 and received the AIGA Gold Medal in 2004.
In 1991, Richard Saul Wurman received the Kevin Lynch Award from MIT and was honored by a retrospective exhibition of his work at the AXIS Design Gallery in Tokyo. He was awarded a Doctorate of Fine Arts by the University of Arts in Philadelphia, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Art Center College of Design and received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston. Several of his books are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
