She worked for many years at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where she is University Archivist Emeritus.
[2] Goodstein was born on July 8, 1939, in Brooklyn;[3] both of her parents were college-educated children of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, and worked for the city.
Her dissertation, Chemical Theory and the Nature of Matter, concerned chemist Humphry Davy, a topic suggested by Satish Kapoor, who also left Washington before she could finish.
She was hired as Institute Archivist by Daniel Kevles in 1968,[1] also teaching the history of science at California State University, Dominguez Hills from 1969 to 1973 and later at the University of California, Los Angeles.
[2] Goodstein is the author of: She also wrote the screenplays for two episodes of Caltech's television series The Mechanical Universe.