Victor Margolin (1941–2019) was an American design historian, researcher and educator. He was a Professor of design history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he taught from 1982 until 2006. Margolin published widely and was the founding editor and co-editor of the academic design journal, Design Issues.
Margolin's work was interdisciplinary, crossing between fields of design history, design studies and design research, and extending into issues of sustainability and globalisation.
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. The first two volumes were published in 2015, with the third volume remaining uncompleted.
Margolin began teaching art and design history in 1982 at the School of Art and Art History, University of Illinois, Chicago, where he was the first design historian they had hired, and taught there until retiring in 2006.