[1] He was a professor of Chemistry and served as vice president of what is now Nanjing University from 1923–1925.

He was a founding member of the Science Society of China, a major science organization in the modern history of China initiated by Chinese students at Cornell University in 1914,[2] and served as its president from 1914 to 1923.

[3] He earned a Bachelor's in chemistry from Cornell in 1916 and a Master's from Columbia University in 1917.

Prior to his studies in the United States, he served as the secretary of Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China while he was the Provisional President in 1912.

[citation needed] He was married to Chen Hengzhe,[4] who was the first woman to be a professor at a Chinese university.