William Edward Shinn was born on June 13, 1900 in Cabaras County, North Carolina, the son of John Calvin and Laura Barringer Shinn. In 1920, he enrolled as a freshman at North Carolina State College, and four years later graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelor of Science degree in Textiles. From 1915 or 1917 until his college graduation in 1924, Shinn worked for the Cannon Mills Company in China Grove and Kannapolis, North Carolina. Later in his life Shinn believed that his employment experiences at Cannon Mills provided the foundation for his success as a textile educator.

After his graduation from North Carolina State, Shinn was briefly employed by Cannon as a management trainee. However, he soon returned to the College as an instructor. In 1924, Shinn organized and taught the first knitting courses offered by North Carolina State. During this same time, Shinn continued working for Cannon Mill Company in China Grove during the summers. He also pursued a Master of Science degree in textiles, which he completed at North Carolina State College in 1929. That same year, Shinn moved to South Carolina in order to begin teaching at Clemson College. In addition to being a professor, he was Head of the Department of Weaving and Designing. In that capacity Shinn greatly expanded the instruction facilities in knitting, one of the constituent branches of his department. In 1930, Professor Shinn took a leave of absence from Clemson and served as a textile technologist in the United States Bureau of Standards. After a brief period working for the federal government, Professor Shinn returned to Clemson. In 1935, he left the South Carolina college permanently and returned to North Carolina State. As a professor of textiles at the College, Shinn courses in textile testing, advanced textile design, and fabric analysis. From 1942 until 1944, Professor Shinn served as a major in the Army's Chemical Warfare Service. He remained employed as a professor by North Carolina State, and in 1942 was named Head of the Department of Knitting Technology at the school. Professor Shinn retired from teaching at North Carolina State in June 1969. At that time, however, he promptly returned to academia. He had a prominent role in organizing a two-year textile management program at Wingate College near Charlotte, North Carolina. The program - intended to train students for middle management positions in the textile industry - began operation during the fall semester of 1971.

During his lengthy academic career, Professor Shinn published seven textbooks and many technical articles that were utilized in the instruction of textile technology for many years after their initial publication. For several years, Professor Shinn was also a consulting editor for the scholarly publication and a member of numerous professional organizations. Moreover, despite his many teaching and administrative responsibilities, Professor Shinn directed and participated in several research projects throughout his career, with external organizations such as the Underwear Institute, the Textile Research Institute, Sylvania Industrial Corporation, and agencies of the federal government. Often, the research for these projects transpired at North Carolina State and involved students and other faculty members as well as Professor Shinn.

However, Professor Shinn's most important professional contribution was his development of a knitted artificial aorta - a graft that would replace the principal artery in the human heart. Shinn's invention - which he developed in the mid 1950s in collaboration with Dr. Paul W. Sanger of North Carolina's Charlotte Memorial Hospital - was the first knitted artery for use in the human body. Dr. Sanger had been working on the project for some time, but needed assistance in developing a fabric for the artery that would stretch, not flatten, when curved and that would resist deterioration within the human body. Dr. Sanger contacted Malcolm Campbell, then Dean of the School of Textiles at North Carolina State, in 1954; Campbell then passed the problem on to Professor Shinn. He started from scratch, testing a variety of fibers and production methods. Shinn eventually selected polyester as the best material and produced the artificial arteries on an old machine that knitted neckties. In 1971, private industry began manufacturing the aortas with virtually no changes to the methods he had developed almost twenty years previously. However, between 1955 and 1971, Professor Shinn and others made hundreds of artificial aortas at North Carolina State for distribution all over the world. They were made at the department's expense and a patent was never obtained.

Professor Shinn passed away at the age of ninety-four on February 18, 1995. Survivors included his wife, Virginia W. Shinn; a daughter, Elizabeth S. Greenwood of Winston-Salem; two sons, William E. Shinn Jr. of Decatur, Alabama and Robert W. Shinn of Charlotte; and siblings and grandchildren.