Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a novelist, public intellectual and Professor of Philosophy. She has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy. She has taught at Columbia and Rutgers. She has been a visiting scholar at Brandeis University, a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, a Visiting Professor of Philosophy and English at NYU, as well as Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities, London, England. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2014 National Humanities Medal given by President Barack Obama, the 2011 Humanist of the Year from the American Humanist Association, the Koret Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought for her book Betraying Spinoza, the National Jewish Book Award for Strange Attractors, and the National Jewish Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Mazel. Goldstein has been named a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellow, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has also been awarded Whiting Foundation Fellowship.