He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto under the supervision of John Lighton Synge in 1942, and then worked as a research associate in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Caltech.

His major research activities include; the intrinsic theory of plates and shells, the analysis of large deflection of thin plates and shells, the analysis of corrugated pipes, mechanics of armour penetration, singular perturbation methods, variational principles and generalized variational principles, finite element methods as well as the measurements of atmospheric electricity, spectral analysis of rare-earth elements, wave guide theory, lubrication theory, the development of high-energy batteries, his macro-coding of Chinese characters, etc.

Due to his work on the problems of large deflation of circular elastic plates and the generalized variational principles, he won the State Natural Science Award (Second Class) twice, in 1965 and 1982.

In the early 1980s, Qian worked with Zhou Youguang and Liu Zunqi on creating a Chinese-language edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.

He believed that the key role of higher education is to bring up excellent new generations with prefect personality and advanced expertise.

[citation needed] Qian also served as chairman of the Steering Committee of the Third International Conference on Linear Mechanics in Shanghai in 1998.