Witold Rybczynski was born in Scotland in 1943. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture in 1966 and a Master's Degree in Architecture in 1972, both from McGill University. He taught at McGill from 1974 to 1993 and at the University of Pennsylvania from 1993 to 2012 where he is an Emeritus Professor of Architecture.
Rybczynski is the author of numerous books including Home: A Short History of an Idea which was nominated for the 1986 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, and a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, A Clearing in the Distance, for which he was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. In 2007, he received the Vincent J. Scully Prize from the National Building Museum.
Rybczynski delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 19, 2013, titled "Architecture and the Passage of History".
