Born in Chungking, China immigrated to United States1959. University of California, Berkeley (B.A. physics 1962 and M.A. physics 1966). In 1966 Ma joined the University of California, San Diego physics department as an assistant researcher in Keith Brueckner's research group. He was promoted to faculty status in 1967 and remained with the physics department until his death in 1983. During his career at UCSD, Ma was also a visiting professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study (1968-1970), at Cornell University (1972), at the University of California, Berkeley (1973-1974), at CEN Saclay in France, at Tsing Hua University, Taiwan (1977-1978 and 1981), and at IBM - Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York (1981). Research interests included amplification and extension of Kenneth Wilson's pioneering work in renormalization group theory of critical phenomena; Ma focused on its applications to critical phenomena.