American physicist, educator, and writer widely known for the clarity of his writing for the lay reader on the major issues of modern physics.

After graduation from Harvard University (Ph.D., 1955), Bernstein worked at Harvard and at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, N.J. In 1962 he became an associate professor of physics at New York University. He became a professor of physics at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., in 1967, a position he continued to hold. He was also on the staff of The New Yorker magazine and held a variety of appointments throughout the United States and in Switzerland, France, and Pakistan.

In interpreting science for the general public, Bernstein illuminated topics ranging from cosmology to the origins of the computer. He published a number of books on such topics and also wrote a column entitled “Out of My Mind” for a journal called The American Scholar. His autobiographical memoir, The Life It Brings, was published in 1986.