Lester Bernstein was born in the early 1880s in the state of Pennsylvania. His parents immigrated to the United States from Germany in the late 1860s. Bernstein attended Lehigh University from 1900-1904. He won several awards and held many positions in numerous societies on campus. In his junior year (1902-03) Bernstein won the Civil Engineering Society Prize, First Honors in his Civil Engineering Course, was the Delegate to the Cleveland Convention and was Civil Engineering Society Treasurer. In his senior year at Lehigh (1903-04) Bernstein was the President of the Civil Engineering Society, Secretary of the Starvation Club, Assistant Editor-in-Chief of the 1904 Epitome, and Vice President of his fraternity, Tau Beta Pi. Other awards that he received during his time at Lehigh were the second honors in sophomore English, Williams Prize in English and The Wilbur Prize in Freehand Drawing. He was a member of the Forum and Secretary of the "Lehigh Club of Philadelphia." He likely served as an engineer for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company in 1917. Lester Bernstein served on the Board for The American Railway Engineering Association in 1918. He later went on to marry Florence Goldsmith and was listed in the 1965 Centennial Directory as living in Los Angeles, California.
From the description of Lester Bernstein physical laboratory notebook 1901. 1901. (Lehigh University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 502264194
