Popper, Sir Karl

Basic Biographical Information

Sir Karl Popper was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1902. While attending the University of Vienna during the 1920s Popper became acquainted with the “Wiener Kreis” (Vienna Circle), a group of academics, which was mainly concerned with problems of the philosophy of science. The threat of Nazism forced him to emigrate to New Zealand in 1937. It was there where he wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies, his most famous political work. From 1946 to 1969 he held a professorship at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Even after retirement, Popper did substantial research and published widely. He died in 1994 in London (England).

Major Accomplishments/Contributions

Sir Karl Popper is surely one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. In order to describe his own position he coined the term critical rationalism. This school of thought claims that any scientific theory needs to specify the conditions under which it...