In 1940, he was admitted to 同济附中 (tong ji fu zhong), a high school affiliated to Tongji University.

He was the founding director of Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital affiliated to the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai.

When he was eight years old, he started to study at an overseas Chinese school while helping his father at his job cutting rubber from the trees.

But he was unable to go to the frontline, so he enrolled in High School Affiliated to Tongji University and determined to “study to save the country” by treating wounded soldiers and raising funds.

The success of this specimen played a decisive role in helping to understand the distribution of vessels and the direction of blood flow in the liver.

After observation, research, and 200 cases of clinical exploration, Wu understood the deconstructed structure of the human liver.

In September, 1979, Wu was invited to deliver a report at the 28th International Society of Surgery Congress in San Francisco.

Wu reported 181 cases of primary liver cancer treated by surgical resection from January 1960 to December 1977 with a low mortality rate of only 8.8%, which shocked the participating experts.

[10] Wu was inspired by the news of Rong Guotuan winning a table tennis championship and thought about using the same material as a pingpong ball to create models.

[16][17] This is a theory he developed after carefully studying almost 200 specimen of human livers from patients  of different age, sex and health conditions.

Guided by this new way of thinking, he proposed the “Five-lobe and Four-segment" theory in 1960 for the first time and published Observation on Intrahepatic Anatomy of Normal People in China(《我国正常人肝内解剖的观察》), Anatomical Observation of Normal Human Intrahepatic Bile Duct and Hepatic Artery(《正常人肝内胆管和肝动脉的解剖学观察》)etc., and constructed a brand new theory of human liver anatomy.

This is the first time for a Chinese scholar to propose an explicit explanation of “Five-lobe and Four-segment” theory in the international community of academia.

In June 1960, the research team of three represented by Wu reported the new theory on the seventh meeting of Chinese Medical Association held in Zhengzhou, and was recognized by the end of the conference as a major breakthrough in liver anatomy theory in China and also an innovation of great value in clinical treatments.

This theory has also been included in textbooks of Chinese medical schools and other classic works, and has been widely studied and incorporated.

The most prevalent solution to preventing ischemia reperfusion injury in liver surgeries was low temperature anesthesia.

[10] Wu was inspired by water taps and thought about installing something similar to a valve on liver arteries and portal veins of patients to solve this problem.