 Allan Stanley Gotthelf was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 30, 1942.He received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1963 and a Master of Arts in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1964.He then received a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from Columbia University in 1972 and 1975, respectively, where he studied under professors such as Aristotelian scholar John Herman Randall, Jr. An essay based on his doctoral dissertation (both titled "Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality") won first prize in the Dissertation Essay Competition of "The Review of Metaphysics" and was published in that journal in December 1976.