Yuri Berlin received his master's degree in Physics from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1968, studying luminescence of aromatic molecules dissolved in organic liquids. During the period 1968-1974, Berlin worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Chemical Physics, the USSR Academy of Science, and in 1974 completed his PhD studies at the Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology under the supervision of Victor Talrose. His thesis was focused on the development of theory for the ion-pair mechanism of radiolysis of non-polar liquids.