Lou comes from a long line doctors and graduated from the University of London.

Lou was the graduate tutor of Tu Youyou, who is a renowned pharmaceutical chemist, educator and Nobel laureate.

In the summer of 1939 he was accepted to National Military Medical Academy, after graduation, he taught there.

In 1943 he became a member of the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) and he was an editor of Quarterly Journal of Pharmacy.

He returned to China (the newly established People's Republic) in January 1951 and in that year became an associate professor of the Department of Pharmacy at Zhejiang University.