She made important contributions to China's metallurgy, nuclear power, and high-temperature superconductivity programs, and was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.

Her father Li Siguang (J. S. Lee) was a renowned geologist and professor at Peking University, and her mother Xu Shubin (许淑彬) was a pianist and schoolteacher.

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, her family sought refuge in Shanghai and then in Guilin, Guangxi, which was free from Japanese occupation.

She worked at the Aviation Institute in Chengdu, and with the help of Joseph Needham, won a British Cultural Council scholarship to study at the University of Birmingham in 1946.

After earning her master's degree in 1948, she continued her studies at the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge,[1] where she met and married fellow Chinese scientist Chen-Lu Tsou.