Liu was born on 17 March 1931 in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. After graduating from Changzhou Senior High School, he studied at the Department of Chemistry of East China Normal University in Shanghai, and earned his bachelor's degree in 1953. He was assigned to Beijing Normal University, where he worked and studied under Hu Zhibin (). In 1958, he was transferred to the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study nuclear chemistry under Feng Xizhang (). It was a turning point in his career.