Peter Lewyn Bernstein (January 22, 1919 – June 5, 2009) was an American financial historian, economist and educator whose evangelizing of the efficient-market hypothesis to the public made him one of the country's best known popularizers of academic finance.[1]
Education and military service during World War II
In 1951, after teaching economics at Williams College and a five-year stint in commercial banking, Bernstein took over, at family insistence, the management of his late father's wealth management firm, Bernstein-Macaulay Inc.,[1] where he personally managed billions of dollars of individual and institutional portfolios. The assets under his management had grown more than tenfold by the time the firm was sold in 1967 and he resigned in 1973 to launch Peter L. Bernstein, Inc. and, a year later, to become the first editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management, a widely read scholarly financial publication for investment managers and academics. He continued as consulting editor of the Journal and served on the advisory panel of Robert D. Arnott's investment management firm, Research Affiliates.
Career as educator and lecturer
Bernstein served for many years on the Visiting Committee to the Economics Department at Harvard University, as a Trustee and member of the Finance Committee of the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF), and as a Trustee of the Investment Management Workshop sponsored by the Association for Investment Management & Research (AIMR), and had been lecturing widely throughout the United States and abroad on risk management, asset allocation, portfolio strategy, and market history.
A longtime resident of Manhattan, Peter Bernstein was 90 years old when he died of pneumonia at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital, after having broken a hip. His first wife, Shirley, died in 1971 and he is survived by his second wife, Barbara, whom he married in 1972.
Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, was published by John Wiley & Sons in September 1996 and won the Edwin G. Booz Prize for the most insightful, innovative management book published in 1996. In 1998, it was awarded the Clarence Arthur Kulp/Elizur Wright Memorial Book Award from The American Risk and Insurance Association (ARIA) as an outstanding original contribution to the literature of risk and insurance. The book has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.
Earlier books include A Primer on Money, Banking and Gold (Random House 1965), as well as Economist on Wall Street (Macmillan 1970), and The Price of Prosperity (Doubleday, 1962), in addition to two books on government finance co-authored with Robert Heilbroner.
Bernstein’s other books are The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession, published in the fall of 2000 by John Wiley and Sons, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, published in 2005 by W.W. Norton & Co.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1983). International Investing. New York: Institutional Investor Books.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1978). Security Selection and Active Portfolio Management. New York: Institutional Investor Books.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1977). The Theory and Practice of Bond Portfolio Management. New York: Institutional Investor Books.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1977). Portfolio Management and Efficient Markets: Theoretical Relevance and Practical Applications. New York: Institutional Investor Books.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1970). Economist on Wall Street: Notes on the Sanctity of Gold, the Value of Money, the Security of Investments, and Other Delusions. New York: Macmillan.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1965). A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold. New York: Random House.
Heilbroner, Robert L.; Peter L. Bernstein (1963). A Primer on Government Spending. New York: Random House.
Bernstein, Peter L. (1962). The Price of Prosperity: A Realistic Appraisal of the Future of our National Economy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Awards
Peter Bernstein received three major awards from the CFA Institute, the key organization for investment managers and analysts:
The Award for Professional Excellence, AIMR's highest award,
The Graham & Dodd Award, given annually for the outstanding article in the Financial Analysts Journal for the previous year, and
The James R. Vertin Award, recognizing individuals who have produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals.