[1] During World War II, Arthur Goodhart's outspoken opposition to Nazism led to Charles (aged 2) being evacuated alongside his two elder brothers to the United States.

[1] Upon their return, Charles joined his brother William Goodhart at the St Leonards branch of the (Oxford) Summerfields School.

[2] After he finished school, he completed two years of compulsory national military service (1955–1956) in which he was involved with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis and earned the rank of second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

[2] In October 1957, Goodhart started studying economics at Cambridge University, where he was a member of his father's college, Trinity.

[1] He learnt under economists such as Nicky Kaldor, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Michael Farrell, Frank Hahn and Robin Matthews.

[1] After completing his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, Charles moved to the United States in 1960 to begin research at Harvard University studying trade cycles.

[1][2] In June 1962, following the completion of his PhD thesis, which analysed United States monetary history (specifically why the economy rebounded in 1907 but not in 1929), Charles and his new wife travelled back to Cambridge.

[1] He spent the next two years interpreting English monetary history by cumulating and analysing the monthly reports of the London Joint Stock Banks, which were published after the Barings crisis of 1890.

[1] Charles left the London School of Economics to work a temporary two-year assignment at the Bank of England.

[1] Following the events of Black Saturday (1983), Goodhart travelled to Hong Kong to assist in implementing a currency board system that was linked to the United States dollar.

[1] In late 1987, he gave his first lecture: 'The foreign exchange market: a random walk with a dragging anchor',[9] which was reprinted later in Economica.

[11] He then collaborated with Swiss firm Olsen and Associates to lead conferences about the importance of high speed data analysis and collection.

[17] In an article included as part of the South African Reserve Bank Conference,[17] Goodhart assessed the actions taken to provide global financial stability and concluded: "proposed reforms are incomplete and/or partially misdirected".

[7] Although written initially as a witty comment about monetary targeting,[1] the underlying thought behind this notion was taken very seriously and was linked to the Lucas Critique of evaluation and policy modelling.

[3] In reflection to the creation of Goodhart's Law, Charles wrote: "it does feel slightly odd to have one's public reputation largely based on a minor footnote".

[2] He found value in mathematical models as they can be integrated with real world data – exposing their usefulness and any underlying interactions.