at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1956 and his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University in 1960 for nuclear magnetic resonance under the supervision of Nicolaas Bloembergen.
Pershan began his career in nuclear magnetic resonance; however, before moving on to other things, he and Bloembergen produced some of the first papers on non-linear optics, a field for which Bloembergen later received Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981.
Along with Jens Als-Nielsen, Pershan developed the first synchrotron X-ray reflectometer for the study of the horizontal free surface of a liquid, and carried out the first synchrotron measurements on liquid surfaces at HASYLAB, DESY in 1982.
Aside from sabbaticals at the University of Paris, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Risø National Laboratory Pershan has been at Harvard University (where he has been a faculty member since 1961) since he arrived as a graduate student in September 1956.
In addition to over 240 scientific articles Peter Pershan has published three books: