Joseph L. Goldstein American molecular geneticist. He was born on April 18, 1940, in Sumter, South Carolina, the only son of Isadore E. and Fannie Alpert Goldstein. Goldstein received his B.S. degree from Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., in 1962 and obtained his medical degree from the Southwestern Medical School of the University of Texas at Dallas in 1966. Goldstein became friends with Brown when they were both working as interns at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1966 to 1968. Goldstein then conducted research under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 1972, studying genetically predisposing factors that caused the accumulation of blood cholesterol in people prone to heart attacks. He returned to teach at the Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in 1972 and was there reunited with his colleague Brown. In 1988, he received the National Medal Of Science.