[1] Goldschmidt was born Elisabeth Wechsler into an Orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany, on September 22, 1912.

She began studying medicine at the University of Frankfurt in 1932, but after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany the following year, she dropped out and moved to London, England.

This fellowship led to her traveling to the United States for a year, where she worked in the laboratories of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Curt Stern.

Upon returning to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1951, she resumed her genetics research and began teaching the subject to medical students.

[4] Early in her career, Goldschmidt focused her research on the adaptation of certain organisms to conditions of extreme salinity.