[1] His father taught English at an elementary school outside Shanghai, while his mother Zen Wan (Chien) Wang was a homemaker.
He immigrated to the United States in June 1945 to attend Harvard University for graduate school, earning a PhD in applied physics in 1948.
Wang coinvented the pulse transfer controlling device with Way-Dong Woo, a schoolmate from China who fell ill before their patent was issued.
Harvard reduced its commitment to computer research in 1951, prompting Wang to start his own engineering business.
Typical installations had a master unit (supplying disk storage) connected to intelligent diskless slaves which the operators used.
The Wang 2200 was one of the first desktop computers with a large CRT display and ran a fast hardwired BASIC interpreter.
In 1984, Wang and his family owned about 55 percent of the company stock, and Forbes magazine, estimating his worth at $1.6 billion, ranked him as the fifth richest American.
Hard times ensued for the company and the elder Wang was eventually forced to remove his son in 1989.
However, enrollment remained low, and in 1987, after nearly a decade of operation, Wang decided to discontinue funding the institution and transferred ownership of the campus to Boston University.