In 1915, Lu went to study in the United States. In 1920, he graduated from the
University of Chicago Department of Psychology with the doctoral paper "The Conditions of Retention". Lu returned to China that year and was hired by various academies in Nanjing. While he was teaching in the
University of Nanjing, he became the first one to introduce the
Pavlovian theories into China along with various other Western psychological ideas. In 1927, he arrived in Beijing and was hired as the professor of psychology at
Yenching University. In 1933, he went to
University of Chicago faculty of biology to pursue further education in psychology. He returned to China the next year and was appointed as the president of Yenching. During the onset of the
Second Sino-Japanese War, the study of psychology was halted. Lu began to turn his devotion of research into the Chinese linguistics, and published various papers beginning in 1939. His published book
The Structure of Hanyu was one of the first complete analyses of the Chinese language structure. Lu was also one of the original developers of
Pinyin. In August 1941, he was arrested by the Japanese Army along with several other employees of Yenching University. After being discharged, he began to research on the
Classical Chinese and completed the first draft of
Introduction to Classical Pronunciation, in September, 1943. After the Second Sino-Japanese War was over, Lu was in charge of rebuilding Yenching University. After the establishment of the
People's Republic of China, Lu was transferred to the
Chinese Academy of Sciences. During the
Cultural Revolution, he was criticized and persecuted like many other scholars at the time. On November 21, 1970, Lu died in Beijing due to illness. == Works ==