Towards the end of the First World War, his father, pharmacology researcher and physician, sent him to the
Black Forest to a farmer so he could obtain food in exchange for manual labor. In 1942, under the direction of
Robert Oppenheimer, Peters completed his doctorate in physics. During his time at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory Peters was active in the
Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians, a labor union affiliated to the
Congress of Industrial Organizations. In
J Robert Oppenheimer's 1949
House Un-American Activities Committee hearing, Peters was accused of being a communist sympathizer, a "crazy person" and "quite a red" by Oppenheimer. The Rochester Times-Union broke the story a few days later, and Peters soon realized that his academic career in the US was affected. Peters could not find work in the United States, and in 1951 he left the country for
Mumbai, India where he continued to study cosmic rays for eight years.
Homi J. Bhabha, after consulting Nehru, helped him relocate to India. Bernard Peters was invited by Bhabha to
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1951. Peters was then invited to Denmark by
Niels Bohr in 1958, and was until 1966/67 associated with the Niels Bohr Institute where he continued his research in
particle physics and cosmic radiation. In 1967 the
Danish Space Research Institute was founded and Peters became the director, shaping its objectives and leading it until the end of 1978. Peters was involved in the
European Space Research Organization (ESRO) and other international organizations and realized early on the importance of scientific satellites in geostationary orbit and contributed to the
GEOS satellite being included in ESRO's scientific program and to the Danish Space Research Institute being strongly placed in this program. Peters died February 2, 1993, in
Copenhagen, Denmark . His nephew
David B. Kaplan is an American physicist. ==Works==