Feng was born in Nanjing, China and spent his childhood in Suzhou, Jiangsu.
In 1951 he was appointed as assistant professor at Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
From 1951 to 1953 he worked at Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, under the supervision of Professor Lev Pontryagin.
[2] In the later 1950s and early 1960s, based on the computations of dam constructions, Feng proposed a systematic numerical technique for solving partial differential equations.
[2] In the 1970s Feng developed embedding theories in discontinuous finite element space, and generalized classical theory on elliptic partial differential equations to various dimensional combinations, which provided a mathematical foundation for elastic composite structures.
Since these algorithms make use of the corresponding geometry and the underlying Lie algebras and Lie groups, they are superior to conventional algorithms in long term tracking and qualitative simulation in many practical applications, such as celestial mechanics and molecular dynamics.