He was an academician of the Academia Sinica and served as the chair of the Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania.
He graduated from Zhejiang University in 1946 and his main academic advisor was Su Buqing.
From 1952 to 1954, he taught at the University of Illinois, and from 1954 to 1956, he was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he began a lifelong collaboration with Deane Montgomery.
[3] Yang's earliest research focused on finite projective geometry.
Yang worked mainly in differential topology (especially group actions on manifolds) and published numerous papers in this field,[4] many in collaboration with Deane Montgomery.