William Cohn (1880-1961) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. He studied art history and archaeology in Paris and Berlin and received his doctorate from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1904. From 1907 he lectured and published books and articles on the history of Japanese and Chinese art. Between 1909 and 1914 he travelled to Japan, China, the United States, India and Ceylon. After the First World War he worked as an advisor for several Berlin museums, his tasks including the cataloguing of the collection of the Museum of East Asian Art (now part of the Berlin State Museums). From 1921 he lectured at the Lessing University. Between 1921 and 1925 he published the eleven-volume Die Kunst des Ostens in Einzeldarstellungen followed by the Jahrbuch der asiatischen Kunst (1924-1925).

In 1929 Cohn took on the role of curator of Berlin's Ethnological Museum, but with the rise of the National Socialists to power in 1933, he was no longer able to work as a lecturer or a curator. He left for England in 1938 and was involved with projects including, in 1945-1946, the reorganisation and preparation of the British Museum's collections for its postwar reopening. Soon after he settled in Oxford, studying for a Masters degree at New College, and afterwards lecturing on East Asian Art at Oxford University. In 1947 he founded the magazine, Oriental Art. He became Advisor in Oriental Art to the Ashmolean Museum, helping to establish what is now known as its Eastern Art Department. He retired in 1955.

In 1960 the University of Oxford awarded Cohn an honorary doctorate in literature. He died in 1961. In 1963, a donation from his widow, Isabella, established the William Cohn Memorial Fund, in support of lectures on Eastern Art or other commemoration of William Cohn.