Born in Shanghai on August 2, 1944, he is a satellite meteorologist, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and professor of Lanzhou University.

• In August 1965, after graduation, he worked in the Institute of Atmospheric Science of the Central Meteorological Bureau Long-term Forecast Research Office (to October 1969).

• In November 1969, he worked in Jiangxi Wuqi Cadre School of the Central Meteorological Bureau (to May 1971).

• In June 1971, he worked in the Central Meteorological Observatory (to October 1983).

• In June 1980, he went to the University of Colorado to study atmospheric sciences as a visiting scholar (until June 1982).

• In October 1983, he served as the Deputy Director of the National Meteorological Centre (until March 1986).In November, he joined the Communist Party of China.

• In March 1986, he served as the director and Chief Engineer of the National Satellite Meteorological Centre (until October 1996).In 1987, he presided over the real-time forest fire monitoring service during the Greater Hinggan Mountains forest fire in northeast China.

• In the summer of 1991, severe flood disaster occurred in the Jianghuai River basin. He proposed to monitor the flood with meteorological satellite data objectively and effectively.

• In October 1996, he served as chief engineer of the National Satellite Meteorological Center (until March 2010).

• In 1997, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, belonging to the Ministry of Environment and Textile Engineering (Applied Meteorology) .

• In June 2012, he won the 9th Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award.

• Academician Xu Jianmin was responsible for organizing the project design, technical coordination, organization in in the FY-1 (polar orbit) and FY-2 (stationary) application system engineering construction. He led the team to solve the high precision positioning problem in FY-2 cloud pictures , make the FY-2 image positioning accuracy reached the pixel level. Fully realized real-time, full-automatic, high-precision, and contributed to the application of FY-2 satellite observation data