Liliya Solomonovna Gutner was born in Mogilev oblast, Belarus on 13 June 1903. In 1925 she graduated from Leningrad [St Petersburg] State University. From 1925 to 1930, she worked at the Leningrad [St Petersburg] Agricultural Institute as a trainee, and later as a laboratory assistant. From 1930 to 1932 and from 1935 to 1942, she worked at the All-Union Institute of Plant Protection, as laboratory assistant, junior scientist, senior scientist, and finally as deputy head of the Laboratory of Systematics. From 1933 to 1934 she worked at the All-Union State Association of Pest Control & Agricultural Diseases (Quarantine Inspectorate) as an expert plant pathologist. In 1936 L.S. Gutner earned the degree of candidate of biological sciences.

L.S. Gutner described many fungi new for science, mainly conidial species. In 1927, she was able to show that the fungus Camptoum curvatum (Hyphomycetes) formed a teleomorph with perithecia. Using ascus characters, she separated this teleomorph into a new genus as Pseudoguignardia scirpi, placing the genus in the Mycosphaerellaceae. Using specimens in Leningrad [St Petersburg] herbaria she monographed about 100 species of the genus Cytospora (Sphaeropsidales). Through her active work on fungi of greenhouse plants in Leningrad [St Petersburg], she described many other new species. She also studied the systematics of fungi parasitic on certain cultivated plants, mainly fibre crops, and described further new species. As a contribution to the collective work Definition of Plant Diseases by Appearance (1927), she prepared the section on diseases of southern fruit trees.

L.S. Gutner died in Kotlas on 4 February 1942. Her monograph on smut fungi was published only after her death.

Summarized from Russian Botanists (Botanists of Russia - USSR). Biographic-Bibliographic Dictionary. Moscow: Moscow Society of Naturalists, p. 96.

Lists. Publications. Taxa. Kirk & Ansell form of name: Gutner.