Henry Nelson Goodman was born on August 7, 1906, in Somerville, Massachusetts (USA), to Sarah Elizabeth (Woodbury) Goodman and Henry L.  Goodman. In the 1920s he enrolled at Harvard University and studied under  Clarence Irving Lewis (who later became his Ph.D. supervisor),  Alfred North Whitehead,  Harry Scheffer, W.E. Hooking, and Ralph Barton Perry.  Goodman graduated from Harvard in 1928. It took him, however, 12 more years until he finished his Ph.D. in 1941 with A Study of Qualities (SQ). There are several possible reasons for the lateness of his Ph.D. Maybe the most important was that Goodman was Jewish, and therefore not eligible for a graduate fellowship at Harvard (Schwartz 1999; Elgin 2000a; Scholz 2005). He had to work outside the university to finance his studies. From 1928 until 1940, Goodman worked as the director of the Walker-Goodman Art Gallery at Copley Square, Boston. This interest and activity in the artworld is more frequently cited as a reason for the lateness of his Ph.D. During his graduate studies Goodman was also a regular participant in W.V. Quine’s seminars on the philosophy of the  Vienna Circle  (in particular of Rudolf Carnap). Goodman also worked closely with Henry Leonard, who wrote his Ph.D. at the same time under Alfred North Whitehead’s supervision. After military service, Goodman taught briefly as “instructor in philosophy” at Tufts College, and was then hired as associate professor (1946–51) and later as full professor (1951–64) at the University of Pennsylvania. He served briefly as Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University (1964–67), finally returning to Harvard in 1968, where he taught philosophy until 1977. At Harvard, he founded Project-Zero, a center to study and improve education in the arts. Besides being an art gallery director as a graduate student, and private art collector throughout his life, Goodman was also involved in the production of three multimedia-performance events, Hockey Seen: A Nightmare in Three Periods and Sudden Death (1972), Rabbit, Run (1973), and Variations: An Illustrated Lecture Concert (1985) (Carter 2000, 2009).