Halperin was born in Brooklyn, New York, where he grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood and attended public schools. His mother was Eva Teplitzky Halperin and his father Morris Halperin. His mother was a college administrator and his father a customs inspector.[2] Both his parents were born in USSR. His paternal grandmother's family the Maximovs claimed descent from Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the BESHT.
In the 1970s, he, together with David R. Nelson, worked out a theory of two-dimensional melting, predicting the hexatic phase before it was experimentally observed by Pindak et al. In the 1980s, he made contributions to the theory of the Quantum Hall Effect and of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. His recent interests lie in the area of strongly interacting low-dimensional electron systems.[3]
In 2018, he was awarded the 2019 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research,[3] for "his seminal contributions to theoretical condensed matter physics, especially his pioneering work on the role of topology in both classical and quantum systems."[11]
^ ab"2019 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research Awarded to Bertrand I. Halperin". APS News. 2018. Retrieved January 7, 2019. Among his many honors, Halperin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to his APS awards, he received the Dannie Heineman Prize of the Göttingen Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Lars Onsager Lecture and Medal of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, an honorary doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Lise Meitner Lecture and Medal, and the Wolf Prize in Physics.
^"2001 Lars Onsager Prize Recipient". APS Physics. Retrieved January 7, 2019. For his wide-ranging contributions to statistical physics and quantum fluids, especially the elucidation of the quantum Hall effect and other low-dimensional electronic phenomena; and for his exemplary leadership in bringing theory to bear on the understanding of experiments.
^Sa'ar, Relly (January 15, 2003). "Multinational Winners of Wolf Prizes for Mathematics, Physics and Agriculture". Haaretz. Retrieved January 7, 2019. This year's Wolf Prize for physics will be awarded to Professor Bertrand Halperin of Harvard University and Professor Anthony Leggett of Illinois University. The jury said the prize was in recognition of the researchers' contribution to the field of condensed matter theory. Halperin, 61, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been a professor at Harvard since 1976.