He was elected as Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003. He graduated from Nankai University in 1965 and after that has been working in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences as Research professor. Currently, he is the Nankai Lecture Professor, the expert member for National Key Research Project of Proteins and the duty director-general of China Association for Instrumental Analysis. Has published over 500 papers, written 7 books and applied more than 50 patents.

His research is focused on the fundamental, new techniques and methods for chromatography. He developed systematic thermodynamic and kinetic research methods for chromatography, and made great contribution to the establishment of expert systems for liquid chromatography. In capillary electrophoresis field, he found the rules by studying the effect of operation parameters and molecular structure of solutes on the migration, and was one of the pioneer researchers in capillary electrochromatography in China. In recent study, with the consideration of great requirements put forward by important application fields, he has been working on the development of new techniques for both qualitative and quantitative proteome study.