Professor Ji Liangnian was born in Yinxian County, Zhejiang Province on April 20, 1934. He is a member of the Communist Party of China. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Shandong University, majoring in chemistry, in July 1956, and studied and worked at the Department of Nuclear Energy, Beijing University and Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages from September 1956 to September 1959. He attended the seminar on matching chemistry run by Nanjing University from September 1959 to 1960 (tutored by academician Dai Anbang and Russian experts) and taught at the Departments of Chemistry in Hengyang College of Engineering and Guangdong University of Technology as teaching assistant and lecturer from 1960 to 1975. He has been teaching at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University since 1975, and has been associate professor, professor, dean of the School of Chemistry and director of the Research Institute of Bio-inorganic Chemistry.

Professor Ji was a visiting scholar to the Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University in the US from October 1982 to November 1983. He was once member and director of the councils of the Chinese Society of Chemistry and the Guangdong Society of Chemistry; member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, an editorial member of the Journal of Chemistry in Higher Education, Journal of Inorganic Chemistry and Journal of Sun Yat-sen University; member of the international evaluation group of disputable theses for Inorganica Chimica Acta; international editor of Metal Based Drugs, Oriental Journal of Chemistry; member of the International Consultative Committee of the past European and Asian Chemistry Conferences (sixth in Brunei, seventh in Pakistan, eighth in Vietnam); member of the International Organizing Committee of the past International Conferences on Applied Biological Inorganic Chemistry (fifth in Greece, seventh in Britain, eighth in Mexico) and the 11th International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (held in Australia from July 19-23, 2003).

Professor Ji was awarded the first "Cow" Golden Ball prize for excellent educators by the National Education Commission in 1995; appraised as advanced personage in the second time of "promoting international and national academic exchanges" in 1996; entitled "Model Worker in Guangdong" in 1997; and given the title of "National Advanced Personage" in 2000. Professor Ji was elected academician of the Chemistry Section of the Chinese Academy of Science.