Crystal Pharmatech would like to express our deepest sympathy to the family of Dr. Joel Bernstein regarding his sudden and unexpected passing on Jan 2nd, 2019. His passion for science and ever-willingness to teach and collaborate with others will certainly be missed by the scientific community.
Joel received his B.A. in Chemistry from Cornell University in 1962. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1967, specializing in Physical organic chemistry. He completed postdoctoral studies at the Univ. of California Los Angeles under the advisement of Dr. Ken Trueblood from 1967-1969, learning the rapidly advancing technique of X-ray crystallography. Joel then pursued a second postdoctoral research experience at the Weisman Institute of Science under the supervision of Gerhard Schmidt from 1969-1971.
Dr. Bernstein joined the faculty of the newly established Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 1971, where he taught until his scheduled retirement in January 2010. He was honered as the incumbent of the Carol and Barry Kaye Professorship of Applied Science in the Department of Chemistry, and Professor Emeritus. During his tenure at Ben-Gurion and even thereafter continued to make many scientific contributions. His research interests centered on the organic solid-state, the study of polymorphism, structure-property relationships, hydrogen-bonding patterns and graph sets and organic conducting materials.
Dr. Bernstein served as an editorial advisory board member for numerous journals involving topics of solid-state organic chemistry, polymorphism and structural chemistry. Dr. Bernstein contributed at the highest level scientifically, having published more than 180 refereed scientific journal articles, contributed at least 15 book Chapters to scientific and authored his own book, “Polymorphism in Molecular Crystals” that was published by Oxford Press in both English and Russian. In 1999 he was elected as "Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science".
Dr. Bernstein is survived by his wife, Tzipi and sons Noam and Etan Bernstein.
