Wu received his BSc in 1946 from National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai (now Shanghai Jiao Tong University), and spent one year teaching upon graduation. In January 1948 he arrived in the U.S. and enrolled at Iowa State University and graduated with an MS in December the same year. After Iowa, Wu went to Caltech, where he shared an office with Julian Cole. Wu was involved in the research group headed by Paco Lagerstrom, where they developed further the asymptotic perturbation method pioneered by Ludwig Prandtl.
