Johann Georg Kohl (28 April 1808 – 28 October 1878) was a German travel writer, historian, and geographer.

Son of a wine merchant, he attended a Gymnasium in Bremen, and then studied law at the universities of Göttingen, Heidelberg and Munich.

Also fundamental to theoretical geography was his Die geographische Lage der Hauptstädte Europas (The Geographical Location of the Capitals of Europe) (1874).

Kohl's record of his 1842 journey to Ireland and the English port of Liverpool provides important insights into the condition of both locations before both were beset by the disaster of the Great Famine.

[1] In Washington and at Harvard, Kohl made friends with many writers including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Washington Irving, and scholars including George Bancroft, Charles Bennett Deane and Louis Agassiz.