Halperin nacque a Brooklyn a New York, dove è cresciuto nel quartiere di Crown Heights. Sua madre era Eva Teplitzky Halperin e suo padre Morris Halperin. Sua madre era un amministratore del college e suo padre un ispettore doganale. Entrambi i suoi genitori sono nati in Unione Sovietica. La famiglia di sua nonna paterna, i Maximov, sosteneva di discendere dal rabbino Ba'al Shem Tov, il BESHT.
Nel 2018 è stato insignito della APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research [2] per "i suoi contributi seminali alla fisica teorica della materia condensata, in particolare il suo lavoro pionieristico sul ruolo della topologia sia nei sistemi classici che in quelli quantistici".[8]
«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.»
«"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."»
«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.»