Nelson Goodman Biography

Mathematically Nelson Goodman is known for a number of publications on calculus and symbolic logic and most particularly Goodman's paradox. It should be borne in mind that the mathematical side of Goodman, although important, is only a tiny facet of a bright and varied career.

A prolific author of both articles and books Nelson Goodman was born in 1906 in Sommerville, Massachusetts. Goodman's interests spanned many fields other than mathematics and this is reflected perfectly in his varying career. In 1928 he received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Harvard, he received his doctorate, also from Harvard, in 1941. From 1929 to 1941 Goodman was the Director of the Walker-Goodman Art Gallery in Boston, following this he was in the miltary until the end of the Second World War. Immediately upon release from the United States Army Goodman was Instructor in Philosophy at Tufts College, Massachusetts and then Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania from 1946 to 1951. Goodman was then promoted to full professor at Pennsylvania, a position he retained until 1964 when he became Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University Massachusetts. From 1968 to 1977 Goodman was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Goodman received many awards in his life ranging from a Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to a Guggenheim Award, he was also involved in a large range of societies covering Philosophy and Art. In 1967 Goodman founded project Zero at Harvard University, this still running project investigates aesthetic education in an interdisciplinary manner. Goodman also wrote and produced a number of films and stage shows. Goodman was a true workaholic who took great pleasure in introducing others to the things that were of importance in his life. Goodman died in 1998 at Needham, Massachusetts at the age of 92. He continued working and publishing right to the end and indeed he had been booked to deliver a conference paper a few days after his death. Nelson Goodman leaves behind a legacy of over 120 articles, as well as over a dozen books. These figures do not include the articles and books that have been written about him and his work.

Books about Nelson Goodman and his impact on his chosen fields started to appear as early as 1967 and by the year 2000 there were over 45 separate books available. The readers of one set of books would not recognise the same Nelson Goodman, so wide and varied were his interests. For example in 1968 Goodman published Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols and 20 years later Variations on Variation-or Picasso Back to Bach, but we also have such titles as The Calculus of Individuals and Its Uses and A Study of Methods of Evaluating Information Processing Systems of Weapons Systems. Goodman is a man who accomplished whatever he set out to do irrespective of the field.