Tsui was born in Fan Village (??????), about 7,5 kilometers from Baofeng, Henan Province, and his parents were both farmers. When he was born, China was full of natural disasters and wars. He studied Chinese classics in a school in the village.

Tsui left for Hong Kong in 1951, and attended Pui Ching Middle School in Kowloon, where he graduated in 1957. He was admitted to the National Taiwan University Medical School in Taipei, Taiwan. Tsui was given a full scholarship to the Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, United States, which is his church pastor's Lutheran alma mater.

Tsui accepted the latter, and moved to the United States in 1958. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Augustana College in 1961. Tsui was the only student of Chinese descent in his college. Tsui continued his study in physics in University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in physics in 1967. Tsui did a year of postdoctoral research at Chicago. In 1968, Tsui joined Bell Laboratories where he was a pioneer in the study of two-dimensional electrons.

His discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect, the work for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, occurred shortly before he was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton in 1982.

Tsui is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2004 election), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1992, Tsui was elected Academician of Academia Sinica, Taipei. In June 2000, Tsui was elected Foreign Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

Tsui also was awarded several prestigious prizes, including:

• Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize, 1984

• Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, 1998

• Nobel Prize in Physics, 1998

• Fractional quantum Hall effect

• Quantum hall effect

• Nobel Prize in Physics 1998

• Nobel autobiography

• Faculty page at Princeton University