Bernstein is a popular science writer and profiler of scientists. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 1961 to 1995, authoring scores of articles. He has also written regularly for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Review of Books, and Scientific American, among others. Bernstein's biographical profiles of physicists, including Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, Albert Einstein, John Stewart Bell and others, are able to draw on the experiences of personal acquaintance. Bernstein's latest publication was in 2018 with A Bouquet of Dyson: and Other Reflections on Science and Scientists