Robin Cormack was educated at
Bristol Grammar School and
Exeter College, Oxford, and gained his PhD from the
Courtauld Institute of Art of the
University of London. He wrote his dissertation on
Thessaloniki after iconoclasm under the supervision of
Hugo Buchthal and
Cyril Mango and it was the latter who suggested he should spend time at
Dumbarton Oaks. Cormack became visiting fellow of Byzantine studies at Dumbarton Oaks in the 1972–73 academic year, taking a year's leave from his lectureship at the Courtauld Institute (1966 to 1982). He later returned to Dumbarton Oaks as a visiting scholar in 2011. After three years as reader at the
Warburg Institute, during which he also held a fellowship at
Robinson College, Cambridge 1984–85, Cormack returned to the Courtauld Institute as reader and professor. He was also deputy director 1999–2002. Photographs attributed to Cormack are held in the
Conway Library, whose archive of primarily architectural images is being digitised under the wider Courtauld Connects project. and co-curator, with Professor Maria Vassilaki,
University of Thessaly at
Volos and the
Benaki Museum, of the Royal Academy's major exhibition
Byzantium 330–1453 (2008–2009). ==Personal life==