In 1947 he graduated from the D. I. Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology, and in 1951 - graduate school of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1967 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Chemical Sciences; since 1969 - professor.
He was assigned to the Divosion of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Chemistry of Physiologically Active Compounds of the Academy and to the Siberian Division since 1981. He worked at the Chemical Physics Institute from 1947 to 1960 when he joined the Siberian Division in a laboratory studying natural polymers and joined the Department of Biochemistry of the Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry. In 1962, he acted as Head of the Natural Polymers Laboratory of the Organic Chemistry Institute in Novosibirsk that was established in 1958 and whose basic work is in the study of aromatic and heterocyclic chemistry and in natural products.
He was named the Founding Director of the Novosibirsk Bioorganic Chemistry Institute.
He was elected to the Presidium of the Siberian Division in 1988. From 1967 to 1983, he was a professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and held the chair of the Department of Molecular Biology from 1979.
Since 1964 he was a dean of Department of Natural Sciences of Novosibirsk State University for 16 years. He is an honored scientist of the former Soviet Union.
He is a laureate of the Prize of the Soviet Council of Ministers in 1987, and the M. M. Shemiakin Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in 1988.
Author of over 350 scientific papers, including a number of reviews and monographs.
Took part in writing textbooks for universities:
- in co-authorship with Professor NM Emanuel - "Course of Chemical Kinetics" (1962, then - three more editions);
- in co-authorship with Professor L. F. Krylova and V. S. Muzykantov - "Physical Chemistry" (1981);
- in co-authorship with Professor SD Myzina - "Biological Chemistry" (1998, then - three more editions; in 2000 he was awarded the RF Government Prize in the field of education);
- in co-authorship with Professor S. D. Myzina, Professor O.S. Fedorova and D.Sc. n. T. S. Godovikova - "Bioorganic Chemistry" (2011).
Under the leadership of D.G. Knorre, over 60 Ph.D. theses were defended, ten of his students became doctors of sciences, three - members of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Russian Academy of Sciences. Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics]
He was a Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics since 1968, and an academician since 1981.
