[1][2] Goldman was born in 1932 and grew up in Brooklyn, where his parents both worked for the public school system.
[1][2] He went on to graduate study in mathematics at Princeton University, completing his doctorate in topology in 1957 under the supervision of Ralph Fox.
[3] Goldman worked at the National Bureau of Standards from 1956 until 1979, when he became a professor of mathematical sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
[1][2] While at Princeton, Goldman came under the influence of Albert W. Tucker, with whom he published three "seminal papers" in Annals of Mathematics Studies on linear programming and convex polytopes.
[1] After moving to Johns Hopkins, his doctoral students included combinatorialist Arthur T.