Jeremy Bernstein

Jeremy Bernstein is Professor Emeritus of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was a staff writer for the New Yorker from 1961 to 1995. He is also a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN, Oxford, the University of Islamabad, and the École Polytechnique. He has written some fifty technical papers and several technical monographs, including Kinetic Theory in the Expanding Universe, An Introduction to Cosmology, Secrets of the Old One, and Quantum Leaps. In addition, he has written fourteen books on popular science and mountain travel.

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Physics The Kilogram [long_description] Prior to 2018, the standard for the kilogram was a platinum alloy cylinder created in 1889 and stored in Paris. Over the years, the cylinder lost about 50 micrograms of mass by surface ablation. That original kilogram is not what it once was—albeit only fractionally. In this note, Jeremy Bernstein explains how the kilogram is now defined using fundamental constants.
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Physics Secrets [long_description] Once the project to make a nuclear weapon began, secrecy became a top priority. The story of these efforts and how they evolved after the war is the subject of Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States. But the book confirms what Jeremy Bernstein has long believed: the information needed to make a nuclear weapon has been in circulation for a long time.
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Physics Reflections on Project Orion [long_description] Prior to Freeman Dyson’s death, Jeremy Bernstein recorded his memories of their work together on Project Orion: a study in the 1950s and ’60s of how nuclear bombs might be used to propel a spaceship—very carefully, as it happens. Bernstein is the last living link to the project, now a half-remembered fantasy. Dyson’s previously unpublished remarks on Project Orion are included in the essay.
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letter On Louis Bachelier
In response to “Trading Volatility”
[short_description] Since Louis Bachelier’s only lasting contribution to mathematics seems to have been his thesis, it is not clear what one would say in a full-length biography. It is a curious and rather sad story...
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Physics The Discovery of Nuclear Fission [long_description] When a Nobel Prize was awarded in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission, Lise Meitner should have been among the winners. Despite the importance of her contribution, Meitner’s work was not properly recognized for decades. In this essay, Jeremy Bernstein tells Meitner’s life story and accomplishments, after her flight from Germany and as she worked among the great physicists of the era.
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Physics Einstein’s Entanglements [long_description] In three short pieces, Jeremy Bernstein explores Einstein’s evolving views on quantum theory, Einstein and Oppenheimer’s contrasting conclusions about black holes, and Einstein’s longstanding friendship with Michele Besso.
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Physics Charged Interactions [long_description] In a seven-year period, Jeremy Bernstein had three memorable interactions with the physicist Wendell Furry. In one instance, Bernstein was present when Furry testified before Senator Joseph McCarthy. The other two encounters took place at Harvard. Furry was one of the examiners when Bernstein defended his PhD thesis.
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Physics Quantum Leaps [long_description] There is, thoughtful students agree, no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics. Jeremy Bernstein examines John Bell’s discontent with the standard formulations of quantum mechanics.
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Physics A Letter [long_description] The February 15, 1939, issue of the Physical Review included a letter by Niels Bohr entitled “Resonance in Uranium and Thorium Disintegration and the Phenomenon of Nuclear Fission.”
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Physics Three for the Road [long_description] In this compendium piece, Jeremy Bernstein delves into the background and implications of ideas such as particle scattering, quantum entanglement, and the reality of Planck numbers.
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letter On the Discovery of Fission
In response to “Threads in the Tapestry of Physics”
[short_description] Nuclear fission was proposed in a 1934 paper by Ida Noddack, whose work, though serious, was ignored. Fission was realized a decade later through a series of other steps.
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Physics Recollections of Some Notable Texts [long_description] How do you teach quantum physics? What about quantum electrodynamics? Jeremy Bernstein considers a recent collection of Freeman Dyson’s lectures, Advanced Quantum Mechanics, and other published lectures by Julian Schwinger and Steven Weinberg.
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Physics The Pope [long_description] The story of the human (and elemental) interactions leading to the development of the atomic bomb. Jeremy Bernstein reviews The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin.