Frank Johnson Goodnow was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on January 18, 1859, the son of Abel F. and Jane M. (Root) Goodnow. After preparation in private schools in Brooklyn, Goodnow entered Amherst College and received his A.B. degree in 1879. For a short time he worked in a broker's office and then enrolled in the law school of Columbia University, where in addition to such subjects essential for admission to the Bar, he took courses in public law and jurisprudence offered in the recently organized School of Political Science. He received his law degree in 1882 and entered a law office in New York City. Late in 1882 he was offered a position the School of Political Science on the condition that he prepare himself with a year of study abroad. After study in 1883-84 at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris and further work in the University of Berlin, he took up his teaching in October 1884 at Columbia, giving some instruction in History as well as in United States Administrative Law. Made Adjunct Professor in 1887 Goodnow became Professor of Administrative Law in 1891, and in 1903 Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science. He produced a number of books in his particular field and between 1897 and 1907 received the Honorary Degrees of Amherst, Columbia, and Harvard. Governor Theodore Roosevelt made him a member of the commission to draft a new charter for Greater New York, and President Taft chose him as a member of his Commission on Economy and Efficiency. In October 1912 he accepted, on the recommendation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the commission of Constitutional advisor to the Chinese Government which took him to China in March 1913. Returning to the United States, he took up his duties as President of Johns Hopkins University on October 1, 1914 and was inaugurated May 20, 1915. One of his first major tasks was to move the institution to the Homewood site. The greater part of the work of the Faculty of Philosophy was transferred to Homewood in the summer of 1916. In 1925 Goodnow proposed a change in the educational policy of Johns Hopkins University which became known as the Goodnow Plan, proposing the abandonment of undergraduate work. The proposal was approved by the Trustees in January 1926, but proved ultimately unsuccessful. The Institute of Law was established in 1928, but the financial decline precipitated by the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to the indefinite suspension of its work.

Goodnow resigned the Johns Hopkins University Presidency in 1929, but thereafter frequently gave graduate lectures in his special subjects. He was for some time a regent of the University of Maryland and a member of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore. He married Elizabeth Buchanan (Lyall) in 1886 and had 3 children: Isabel C. (Mrs. E. Kendall Gillett), David F. and Lois R. (Mrs. John V. A. MacMurray). Goodnow died on November 15, 1939.