Wang was born in 1907 in the remote village of Shanhou on the island of Jinmen (Quemoy), off the coast of Fujian, China. Although he lost his father at the age of two, and his mother when he was six, he pursued his education vigorously against all odds during a period of wars and political turmoil in China in the 1920s and 1930s. After graduating from Jinling University (now the University of Nanjing) with a degree in chemistry, he went to the University of Cambridge in 1938. His mentor, David Keilin, quickly recognized his talent, and Wang earned his PhD in 1941. He was invited to stay at Cambridge to teach and to continue his research at the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, moving to Cambridge's Molteno Institute in 1944.
When the Second World War ended, Wang decided to return to China, against the advice of both Keilin and Professor Joseph Needham, the foremost historian of Chinese science. Wang's aim was to help the country to develop a world-class research base in science, and his first job was a research professorship at the Medical College of the National Central University. In 1948, he became a senior member of the Medical Research Institute of what was then the Academia Sinica (now the Chinese Academy of Science) — the most prestigious research institution in China. Shortly after the liberation of China in 1949, he was appointed deputy director of the newly established Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry of the Academia Sinica of the People's Republic of China.
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