13 Facts About Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca Goldstein has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Rebecca Goldstein has stressed the role that secular philosophical reason has made in moral advances.

Goldstein, born Rebecca Newberger, grew up in White Plains, New York.

Rebecca Goldstein has one older brother, who is an Orthodox rabbi, and a younger sister, Sarah Stern.

Rebecca Goldstein did her undergraduate work at City College of New York, UCLA, and Barnard College, where she graduated as valedictorian in 1972.

In 1983, Rebecca Goldstein published her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem, a serio-comic tale of the conflict between emotion and intelligence, combined with reflections on the nature of mathematical genius, the challenges faced by intellectual women, and Jewish tradition and identity.

Rebecca Goldstein followed it with a short-story collection, Strange Attractors, which was a National Jewish Honor Book and New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Rebecca Goldstein has written two biographical studies: Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel ; and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity.

Rebecca Goldstein has described the book, which combines elements of memoir, biography, history, and philosophical analysis, as "the eighth book I'd published, but [the] first in which I took the long-delayed and irrevocable step of integrating my private and public selves".

Rebecca Goldstein has held visiting fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute, Brandeis University, the Santa Fe Institute, Yale University, and Dartmouth College.

Rebecca Goldstein serves on the Council on Values of the World Economic Forum, and on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.

Rebecca Goldstein's writing has appeared in chapters in a number of edited books, in journals including The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Tikkun, Commentary, and in blog format in The Washington Post's "On Faith" section.

Rebecca Goldstein married her first husband, physicist Sheldon Rebecca Goldstein, in 1969, and they divorced in 1999.