After graduating from Pui Ching Middle School, he studied mathematics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1966 to 1969. Yau left for the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1969, where he received his Ph.D. in mathematics two years later, under the supervision of Shiing-Shen Chern. He spent a year as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before joining Stony Brook University in 1972 as an assistant professor. In 1974, he became an associate professor at Stanford University.