With ancestry in Yancheng, Jiangsu, Republic of China, Wang was born in Jiangxi to Wáng Zhāng (王章) and Yú Jiéhóng (俞洁虹/俞潔虹). He moved to Taiwan in 1952 with his family. He studied his later part of elementary school in Kaohsiung, and graduated from The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan. He later moved to Hong Kong. He started studying physics in UCLA in 1963, and received his Bachelor of Science in 1967, and his Master of Science in 1968, and his doctoral in low temperature physics – Superfluid and solid state physics in 1971.

After completing his doctorate, Wang joined the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1972, as a senior scientist. At JPL he was responsible for the inception and development of containerless processing science and technology research. He was the Principal Investigator (PI) on the Spacelab 3 mission NASA Drop Dynamics (DDM) experiments, PI on the NASA SPAR Flight Experiment #77-18 “Dynamics of Liquid Bubble,” PI on the NASA SPAR Flight Experiment #76-20 “Containerless Processing Technology,” and PI on the Department of Energy Experiment “Spherical Shell Technology.”

He gained US citizenship in 1975, and published a paper on the dynamic behavior of rotating spheroids in zero gravity the next year. The paper received attention in NASA, and Wang was selected as a payload specialist on June 1, 1983, for the Spacelab-3 mission.

Wang later became a Centennial Professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He has written about 200 journal articles and holds 28 U.S. patents on acoustics, drops and bubble dynamics, collision and coalescence of drops, charged drop dynamics, containerless science, and encapsulation of living cells. His experiments were carried out in 1985 aboard United States Spacelab 3, and in 1992 aboard United States Microgravity Laboratory 1 (USML-1), and in 1995 aboard USML-2.

Wang has received various honors and awards, including Space Flight Medal NASA 1985, Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal NASA 1987, Asian Pacific American Achievement Award 1989. Llewellyn J. Evans Distinguished Scientific, Engineering and Management Award 1994. Educational Award Vanderbilt University Alumni League 1996. He was awarded Asian American Engineer of the Year Distinguished Science and Technology Award, CIE-USA, National Engineers Foundation 2007. He addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly in 1990 as part of the “Only One Earth Day”.