Biography and Family Background
Knorre was born into a three-generation astronomer family. His grandfather, Ernst Friedrich Knorre (1759–1810), had moved from Germany to Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) where he worked (1803–10) as Observator for the Dorpat observatory (opened in 1802) and professor of Mathematics at the University of Dorpat. Victor Knorre's father, Karl Friedrich Knorre (1801–1883), set up and was director of the Nikolayev Astronomical Observatory starting in 1827.
Viktor was born the fifth of fifteen children in Nikolayev (now Mykolayiv, Ukraine). He moved to Berlin in 1862 to study astronomy with Wilhelm Julius Foerster. He worked at Pulkovo Observatory in 1867 as an astronomical calculator and then at Berlin Observatory, where his father moved circa 1871.
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