Xu graduated from the Department of Physics of Zhejiang University in 1942.
Xu was a student of Shu Xingbei and Wang Ganchang.
Xu was treated unfairly during Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign which started in 1957, and he was sent back to his hometown to undergo "reform through labour" (laogai).
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Xu was politically rehabilitated and returned to work in Beijing.
[3] Xu received the second Andrei Sakharov Prize, from the American Physical Society (APS) in 2008.