Harold Joseph Bernstein

Harold Joseph Bernstein

Harold Joseph Bernstein, physical chemist (b at Toronto 26 Aug 1914; d at Florida 14 Dec 1984). After graduating with a PhD from the University of Toronto in 1938, he moved to the University of Copenhagen on a scholarship. Picked up by the Nazi invaders of Denmark in 1940, he underwent the devastating experience of a 5-year internment in Germany.

After the war he joined the NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL in Ottawa in 1946, established a molecular SPECTROSCOPY section, opened up a study of nuclear magnetic resonance - with W.G. SCHNEIDER and J.A. Pople he wrote an important text, High Resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1959) - and pioneered a new field called resonance Raman spectroscopy. In 1969 he organized in Ottawa the first International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy, and in 1973 he co-founded the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, serving as co-editor until his retirement in 1978.

His long career brought international recognition, and many honours and awards accrued to him, including fellowships in the Royal Society of Canada (1953) and in the Chemical Institute of Canada (1954), and the Spectroscopy Society of Canada's Herzberg Award (1978). In 1980 the International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy established the Harold Bernstein Award in Physical Chemistry for graduate students at Ottawa's 2 universities.