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Birth
Popper was born on July 28, 1902 in Vienna, Austria. “His father Simon Siegmund Carl Popper was a lawyer from Bohemia and a doctor of law at the Vienna University while his mother Jenny Schiff was of Silesian and Hungarian descent. Popper's uncle was the Austrian philosopher Josef Popper-Lynkeus” (Wikipedia). -
Drop-Out
“At the age of 16, he left school and attended lectures in mathematics, physics, philosophy, psychology and the history of music as a guest student at the University of Vienna” (Wikipedia). -
College and Courting
“In 1925, he went to the newly founded Pädagogisches Institut and continued studying philosophy and psychology. Around that time he started courting Josefine Anna Henninger, who later became his wife” (Wikipedia). -
Doctorate
“In 1928, he earned a doctorate in psychology, under the supervision of Karl Bühler” (Wikipedia). -
Professor Popper
“Popper stayed in Vienna until 1937, when he took a teaching position at Canterbury University College in Christchurch, New Zealand, and he stayed there throughout World War II” (Encyclopedia). -
New Job, New Works
“In 1946, Popper took a teaching position at the London School of Economics, where he stayed until he retired in 1969. While there, he continued to work on a variety of issues relating to the philosophy of science, including quantum mechanics, entropy, evolution, and the realism vs. anti-realism debate, along with the issues already mentioned. His major works from this period include “The Propensity Interpretation of Probability” (1959) and Conjectures and Refutations (1963)” (Encyclopedia). -
Falsification
Scientific theories are distinguished from non-scientific theories by boldness: they make testable claims that future observations might reveal to be false. This boldness amounts to a willingness to take a risk of being wrong. On Popper’s view, scientists investigating a theory make repeated, honest attempts to falsify the theory, whereas adherents of pseudoscientific or metaphysical theories routinely take measures to make the observed reality fit the predictions of the theory (Encyclopedia). -
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Death
Popper died on September 17, 1994 in Croydon, Greater London, England.