[2] Lin made major contributions to the theory of hydrodynamic stability, turbulent flow, mathematics, and astrophysics.

In 1939 Lin won a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and was initially supported to study in the United Kingdom.

Lin continued his studies in the United States and received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1944 under Theodore von Kármán.

In 2002, he moved back to China and helped found the Zhou Pei-Yuan Center for Applied Mathematics (ZCAM) at Tsinghua University.

Lin was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 1958, and became a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994.