BERNSTEIN, HAROLD JOSEPH

BERNSTEIN, HAROLD JOSEPH (1914–1984), Canadian physical chemist. Born in Toronto, Bernstein completed his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1938. A scholarship from the University of Copenhagen brought him to Denmark that year. In 1940, when Germany occupied Denmark, Bernstein was arrested and interned in Germany until 1945. He returned to Canada after the war and, in 1946, joined the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa and established a molecular spectroscopy section, opening up the study of nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1959, together with W.G. Schneider and J.A. Pople, Bernstein coauthored High Resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, a pioneering text in the field of Raman spectroscopy. In 1973 he cofounded the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy and served as coeditor until 1978. Among other honors, Bernstein was awarded a fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 1953 and, the next year, in the Chemical Institute of Canada. He received the Herzberg Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada in 1978. In 1980 the International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy established the Harold Bernstein Award in Physical Chemistry for graduate students at Ottawa's two universities. (Ruth Rossing (2nd ed.)