William Graff was born in the Netherlands and educated at the University of Louvain, where he received his Ph.D. in 1923. For six years he taught German and Dutch in schools at Huy and St.Truiden Belgium, and conducted dialect research in the Rhineland of Germany for a year. In 1924, Graff was appointed instructor in French and German at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He came to McGill in 1926 as Assistant Professor of German, became Associate Professor in 1929 and Professor in 1948. He also served as head of the department from 1939 to 1956 and retired in the following year as Emeritus Professor.