Jeremy Bernstein

Jeremy Bernstein studied at Harvard University and Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is physics. Employment is recorded with New York University, Stevens Institute of Technology and The Rockefeller University. Distinctions recorded are Fellow of the American Physical Society and Joseph A. Burton Forum Award.

• Name — Jeremy Bernstein • Born — 31 December 1929 • Birthplace — Rochester, New York, U.S. • Died — 20 April 2025 • Place of death — Manhattan, New York, U.S. • Education — Harvard University (BA, MA, PhD) • Doctoral Advisor — Julian Schwinger • Field — Physics, mathematics

Bernstein's parents, Philip S. Bernstein, a Reform rabbi, and Sophie Rubin Bernstein named him after the biblical Jeremiah, the subject of his father's masters thesis. Philip's parents were immigrants from Lithuania, while Sophie was of Russian-Jewish descent. The family moved from Rochester to New York City during World War II, when his father became head of all the Jewish chaplains in the armed forces.

Bernstein studied at Harvard University, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1951, his master's in 1953, and his Ph.D. in 1955. His thesis research, on electromagnetic properties of deuterium, was supervised by Julian Schwinger. As a theoretical physicist, he worked on elementary particle physics and cosmology. A summer spent in Los Alamos led to a position at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1962 he became a faculty member at New York University, moving to become a professor of physics at Stevens Institute of Technology in 1967, a position that he continued to hold after retirement as professor emeritus. He has held adjunct or visiting positions at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN, Oxford, the University of Islamabad, and the Ecole Polytechnique. Bernstein was involved in Project Orion, investigating the potential for nuclear pulse propulsion for use in space travel. In 2025, before his death in April, he was the last living member of the senior personnel of the project. Bernstein died on April 20, 2025, at the age of 95.

Bernstein was a popular science writer and profiler of scientists. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 1961 to 1995, authoring scores of articles. He also wrote regularly for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Review of Books, and Scientific American, among others. Bernstein's biographical profiles of physicists, including Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, Albert Einstein, John Stewart Bell and others, were able to draw on the experiences of personal acquaintance. In 2018, Bernstein published A Bouquet of Dyson: and Other Reflections on Science and Scientists.

• To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion (BBC, 2003)

Jeremy Bernstein worked in physics. He was employed by New York University, Stevens Institute of Technology, The Rockefeller University and CERN.

Jeremy Bernstein is recorded as physicist, writer, historian and essayist.