Claudia Dale Goldin was born in the Bronx, New York City on the 14th of May 1946. Her father Leon Goldin worked as a data processing manager at Burlington Industries while her mother Lucille Rosansky Goldin served as principal of Public School 105.
Goldin graduated from Cornell University with a BA in economics in 1967 after taking a summer course in microbiology there. A class with Alfred Kahn sparked a new passion for economics during her sophomore year which shifted her initial plan to study microbiology.
In 1990 she joined Harvard University as a professor of economics and became the first woman granted tenure in Harvard's economics department. She also holds the distinction of being the first female economist offered or achieving tenure at both Princeton and Penn.
Her co-authored paper The Power of the Pill published in August 2002 highlighted how oral contraceptives enabled women to delay marriage and childbirth. This allowed them to invest more heavily in higher education and careers leading to increasing labor force participation and professional advancement.
Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in October 2023 for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes. She became the third woman to win the award overall and the first woman to win the prize solo without sharing it.