Eduard Kochergin was born on September 22, 1937 in Leningrad. He is a Soviet and Russian theatre designer, writer. Academician of the USSR Academy of Arts (1991, Corresponding Member since 1988). People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) (1988). Laureate of two USSR State Prizes (1978, 1984) and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2001).

In 1960 he graduated from the Ostrovsky Leningrad Theatre Institute (faculty of staging, course of N. P. Akimov). He worked at the Maly Theatre of Opera and Ballet as an assistant to the head of the art and settings workshops, a painter at the Painting and Sculpture facility, then an artist at the Enterprise of graphic works of the Art Fund of the RSFSR.

From 1963 to 1966 Kochergin was the chief designer of the Leningrad Drama and Comedy Theatre (presently the Theatre on Liteiny); from 1966 to 1972 he was the chief designer of the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre. Since 1972 he is the chief designer of the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater formerly known as Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater.