text: Lee was born to a Hokkien family in Shinchiku City (modern-day Hsinchu city) in northern Taiwan, which was then under Japanese rule, to Lee Tze-fan, an artist, and Tsai Pei (), an elementary school teacher from , Taichū Prefecture (Wuqi, Taichung). Lee is a Hokkien with ancestry from Nan'an City, China. Lee played on the baseball and ping-pong teams of Hsinchu Elementary School, and later studied at the Hsinchu Senior High School, where he played tennis, trombone, and the flute.
  He was exempted from the entrance examination and directly admitted to National Taiwan University. He earned a BSc in 1959. He earned his MS from National Tsing Hua University in 1961 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 under the supervision of Bruce H. Mahan. He was a member of the Chemistry International Board from 1977 to 1984.