He had his early education at Udaipur and Indore and received a master's degree in physics from Allahabad University in 1928 under guidance of Meghnad Saha.

[5] He was awarded a PhD from Cambridge University in May 1933 with a thesis entitled "The quantum statistics of dense matter"[6] and he published in the Proceeding of the Royal Society, London.

[7] After his return to India, he worked at the Delhi University from 1934 to 1961 in various capacities as reader, professor and Head of the Department of Physics.

He was scientific advisor to Ministry of Defence from 1948 to 1961 and was then appointed as chairman of the University Grants Commission in 1961 where he worked till 1973.

Dr. D S Kothari and Dr. P Blackett worked together in Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University under the guidance of Lord Ernst Rutherford, the Father of Nuclear physics, later together they paved the defence[10] education[11][12] system in India.