Zhang Xu, male, Han nationality, is a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. He graduated from Jiaotong University and received a doctorate from Harvard.
Zhang spent his career as a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University. Early on, he participated in the construction of China's communication infrastructure. In 1952, he initiated the first lecture on long-distance communications and successively published, over the next 10 years, college text books and scientific reference books such as "Long-Distance Telephone Engineering," "Radio Engineering" and "Multichannel Carrier Telephony."
In 1962, he initiated the first lecture in college on transistor circuits. He also gave the first lecture on digital transmission. He was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.