Richard Saul Wurman’s eclectic career in design spans more than 50 years. He won the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from Cooper-Hewitt, the National Design Museum. This top honor recognizes an individual who has made a long-term contribution to the practice of design. His current projects include Urban Observatory and his newest book, Understanding Understanding, a journey through the myriad ways that he and his many muses have created their own idiosyncratic manners of understanding. Since 1962, Wurman has designed, written, and published 90 books. He has also created a number of conferences, most notably TED, which he created in 1984 and chaired through the 2002 meeting. Wurman lives in Golden Beach, Florida, with his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy, and their three yellow labs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.