He was the son of Włodzimierz Godłowski, a professor at the Wilno University, who was murdered by the Soviet NKVD in 1940 Katyń massacre.
Member of many Polish and foreign scientific societies, including the German Archaeological Institute from 1975 and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1994.
Godłowski conducted research concerned with the chronology of the Roman period, the Migration Period in East-Central Europe, the Przeworsk culture, the ethnic situation in Europe during La Tène and Roman periods and the origin of the Slavs.
As his research convinced him of the impossibility of settlement continuity in Poland between the ancient and medieval eras, he became steadfastly opposed to the predominant at that time notions and theories of primordial Slavic settlements in Poland, tracing the Slavic origins to even further east in Europe instead.
An author of numerous scientific publications in Polish, German and English (The Chronology of Late Roman and Early Migration Periods in Central Europe (1970)).