Jeremy Bernstein (born December 31, 1929) is an Americantheoretical physicist and popular science writer.

Bernstein's parents, Philip S. Bernstein, aReform rabbi, and Sophie Rubin Bernstein named him after the biblicalJeremiah, the subject of his father'smasters thesis. Philip's parents were immigrants fromLithuania, while Sophie was of Russian-Jewish descent. The family moved fromRochester toNew York City duringWorld War II, when his father became head of all the Jewishchaplains in thearmed forces.^[1]

Bernstein studied atHarvard University, receiving hisbachelor's degree in 1951, hismaster's in 1953, and hisPh.D. in 1955, on electromagnetic properties ofdeuterium, underJulian Schwinger. As a theoretical physicist, he worked on elementaryparticle physics andcosmology. A summer spent inLos Alamos led to a position at theInstitute for Advanced Study.^[2] In 1962 he became a faculty member atNew York University, moving to become a professor ofPhysics atStevens Institute of Technology in 1967, a position that he continues to hold asprofessor emeritus.^[3] He has heldadjunct or visiting positions at theBrookhaven National Laboratory,CERN,Oxford, theUniversity of Islamabad, and theEcole Polytechnique.^[4]

Bernstein was involved inProject Orion, investigating the potential fornuclear pulse propulsion for use inspace travel.^[5] As of 2025, he is the final living member of the senior personnel of the project.

Bernstein is a popular science writer and profiler of scientists. He was a staff writer forThe New Yorker from 1961 to 1995, authoring scores of articles.^[6] He has also written regularly forThe Atlantic Monthly, theNew York Review of Books, andScientific American, among others. Bernstein's biographical profiles of physicists, includingRobert Oppenheimer,Hans Bethe,Albert Einstein,John Stewart Bell and others, are able to draw on the experiences of personal acquaintance.^[3][4] In 2018, Bernstein publishedA Bouquet of Dyson: and Other Reflections on Science and Scientists.^[7]

• Analytical Engine – Computers Past, Present and Future, Random House, 1964
• A Comprehensible World: On Modern Science and its Origin, Random House, 1967^[8][9]
• Elementary Particles and Their Currents, Freeman, 1968
• Einstein, Viking Press 1973, Penguin Books, 1976
• Experiencing Science, Basic Books, 1978
• Hans Bethe – Prophet of Energy, Basic Books, 1980
• Science Observed – Essays Out of My Mind, Basic Books, 1982
• Three Degrees Above Zero – Bell Labs in the Information Age, Scribners, 1984^[10]
• Cosmological Constants – Papers in Modern Cosmology (withGerald Feinberg), Columbia University Press, 1986ISBN 978-0-231-06376-0
• The Life it Brings – One Physicist's Beginnings, Ticknor and Field, Penguin, 1987ISBN 0-89919-470-2^[11]
• Kinetic Theory in the Expanding Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1988
• Tenth Dimension: an Informal History of High Energy Physics, McGraw Hill, 1989
• Quantum Profiles conversations with physicistsJohn Stewart Bell andJohn Archibald Wheeler, (and Einstein's correspondence withMichele Besso), Princeton University Press, 1991ISBN 0-691-08725-3; second edition: 2020ISBN 978-0-190-05686-5
• Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos – Writings on Science, Basic Books, 1993ISBN 978-0-465-08897-3^[12][13]
• A Theory of Everything (Essays), Springer, 1996
• Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics, Oxford University Press, 1996
• Hitler's Uranium Club – The Secret Recordings ofFarm Hall (with David C. Cassidy),American Institute of Physics, 1996
• Modern Physics (with Paul Fishbane, Stephen Gasiorowicz), Prentice Hall, 2000
• The Merely Personal: Observations on Science and Scientists, Ivan Dee, 2001^[14]
• Oppenheimer – Portrait of an Enigma, Ivan Dee, 2004ISBN 978-1-566-63569-1^[15]
• Secrets of the Old One: Albert Einstein 1905, Copernicus Books, 2006
• Plutonium – a History of the World's Most Dangerous Element, Joseph Henry Press, 2007ISBN 978-0-309-10296-4
• A Physicist on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society, Springer, 2008ISBN 978-0-387-76505-1
• Quantum Leaps, Belknap Press, 2009; 2011 pbk editionISBN 978-0674060142
• A Palette of Particles, Harvard University Press, 2013ISBN 978-0-674-07251-0^[16]
• Nuclear Weapons – What You Need to Know, Cambridge University Press, 2010ISBN 978-0-521-88408-2
• A Chorus of Bells and Other Scientific Inquiries, World Scientific, 2014ISBN 978-981-4578-94-3
• A Bouquet of Numbers and Other Scientific Offerings, World Scientific, 2016ISBN 978-981-4759-76-2
• A Bouquet of Dyson and Other Reflections on Science and Scientists, World Scientific, 2018ISBN 978-981-3231-92-4

• To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion (BBC, 2003)^[17]

• Scientific publications of Jeremy Bernstein onINSPIRE-HEP
• "Jeremy Bernstein interviewed onWeb of Stories".Web of Stories.
• Works by or about Jeremy Bernstein at theInternet Archive