Daniel Pieter Knobel was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1936. Educated at the Afrikaans Boys High School in Pretoria, South Africa, he graduated as with an MD and specialist anatomist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1966. After being involved in academic medicine as a teacher of anatomy to approximately 20,000 students of all health professions in both Scotland and South Africa, he retired as Professor and Head of the Anatomy Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa in 1979.