Dai was born in
Beijing on 13 November 1924 and was raised at his
ancestral home is in
Jurong, Jiangsu. In 1936, when he studied at Yuying Middle School, the
Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, and his family fled to their grandfather's house in the
Shanghai French Concession. He was a victim of
political persecution that affected other academics at the time. In 1978, he returned to his research position and served as an assistant to
Wang You, director of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry at that time. He was promoted to doctoral supervisor in June 1986. In the 1990s, he and academician
Huang Liang jointly led the major project of the Ninth Five Year Plan - "Chemical and Biological Research of Chiral Drugs". On 13 May 2024, Dai died in
Shanghai, at the age of 99. == Family ==