George Mark Bergman was born on 22 July 1943 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City and received his PhD from Harvard in 1968, under the direction of John Tate. The year before he had been appointed Assistant Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught ever since, being promoted to Associate Professor in 1974 and to Professor in 1978.