Claire Garber Goodman was born in Longview, Texas on January 17, 1933. As a child, her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee which was her home until she married in 1957. Ms. Goodman graduated from the Ten Acre and Dana Hall Schools in Wellesley, Massachusetts and graduated from Connecticut College in 1954.
Claire Goodman received her Master's Degree in Anthropology from New York University in 1978. Her Master's thesis on copper artifacts in the native-American Mississippian period was published in 1983 by the Center for American Archeology with the title "Copper Artifacts in Late Eastern Woodlands Prehistory", edited by Anne-Marie Cantwell. The book is still in print.
During her lifetime, Claire Garber Goodman encouraged anthropological research by both students and faculty. Through this fund and the research it supports, we seek to further Claire Goodman's hope that knowledge from cross-cultural inquiry might provide new bases for enhancing prospects for universal human coexistence.
