Bruce Cameron Reed earned his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo (Canada) in 1984. His doctoral work was in observational astronomy, a study of the distribution of stars in the Puppis direction of the Milky Way. Just before formally finishing his graduate work in 1983, he became a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There he continued to work in observational astronomy, taking up a position as Associate Professor of Physics at Alma College in Michigan in 1992. At Alma, Cameron began to develop an interest in the history and physics of the Manhattan Project. This grew into his primary research focus, and has resulted in some 90 publications and five books, including three with Springer: The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (now in second edition), The Physics of the Manhattan Project (fourth edition), and Manhattan Project: Story of the Century.

He also developed an undergraduate-level general-education class on the Project, and has given a number of related talks and seminars. Overall, he have published eight books and over 200 papers (regular journal papers, review papers, semi-popular articles and essays, and book reviews). Cameron was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2009 in recognition of his work on the Manhattan Project; he served as Editor of the APS's Physics & Society newsletter (2009-13), and as Secretary-Treasurer of the Society's Forum on History of Physics (2013-19). In 2010 Cameron was appointed one of six Charles A. Dana Professors at Alma, and in 2017 he was named one of several "Alumni of Honour" at Waterloo. He formally retired at the end of 2017 and is now "Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus." He then returned to the Halifax area, where he continues to teach part-time, publishes papers, and serves as an Associate Editor with the American Journal of Physics.