Born in Shangyu, Zhejiang,[1]: 329  Chu received his secondary education at the Tangshan School of Rail and Mining in Shanghai.

[2]: 6  Upon receiving the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship,[2]: 6  Chu went to United States for his college education in 1910.

He then studied under Robert DeCourcy Ward at Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in meteorology in 1918.

From 1929 to 1936 he served as director of the Chinese Institute of Meteorology of the Academia Sinica,[2]: 7  which at the time was located in mainland China.

[1]: 332  During that time, he sent manuscripts relating to the history of Chinese science to Joseph Needham in England.