[1] During the Second Sino-Japanese War, he studied mining and metallurgy at the temporary National Northwestern Engineering Institute.

He earned his master's degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1947 and worked at the University of Notre Dame for a year under Paul Beck.

[1] With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the US and the newly established People's Republic of China became openly hostile.

[3] Following protracted negotiations during and after the 1954 Geneva Conference, the US agreed to lift the restraining order on the Chinese students in exchange for the release of American prisoners in China.

Li finally returned to China on the SS President Wilson in November, and the aerospace engineer Qian Xuesen was "deported" by the US in 1955.

[4] He later served as Director of the Institute of Materials of Research of Tsinghua University from 1979 to 1987, and as Chair of the Department of Engineering Physics from 1982 to 1986.

[1] After the Cultural Revolution, he began studying modification of metals with ion beams and published more than 100 papers in the field.