Xu Xianxiu was admitted to Zhejiang No.10 Middle School (now Wenzhou Middle School) senior middle school with 1929. Two years later, he moved to Shanghai and studied in a famous school in China. 1935 graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor of science degree; 1946 went to the United States to study at Brown University, and 1948 received his doctorate in applied mathematics. 1949 studied at Princeton College of Literature for one year and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT in summer. 1979- 1989 was the chairman of Taiwan Province industrial research institute, and proposed the establishment of hsinchu scientific industrial park, which made great contributions to the development of science, technology and industry in Taiwan Province province. He was an academician of Academia Sinica in Taiwan Province Province.

Xu Xianxiu was a professor at Princeton Research Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Illinois Institute of Technology, and a senior professor of aviation and celestial engineering science at Purdue University. He has also served as a consultant for American Radio Company, Boeing Aircraft Company, General Electric Company, Midwest Applied Science Company and Guke Electric Research Laboratory of Argonne National Laboratory. During his tenure as president of Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, Xu Xianxiu founded three colleges in the undergraduate department: Science College, Engineering College and Atomic Science College. The Institute of Technology has four departments: power machinery, material science, industrial chemistry and industrial engineering. During his tenure, he also promoted large-scale research and development plans such as electric vehicle development. 1975 resigned from the school.