Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH, FRS, FBA (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is known for repudiating the classical observationalist/inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsification instead; for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, "the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy" and for his vigorous defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the "open society" possible.

Karl Popper was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1902 to middle-class parents of Jewish origins, both of whom had converted to Christianity. Popper received a Lutheran upbringing and was educated at the University of Vienna. His father, Dr.

Simon Siegmund Carl Popper, was a doctor of law at the Vienna University and a bibliophile who had 12,000–14,000 volumes in his personal library. Popper inherited from him both the library and the disposition. In 1919 he became attracted by Marxism and subsequently joined the Association of Socialist School Students and also became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, which was at that time a party that fully adopted the marxist ideology.

He soon became disillusioned by the philosophical restraints imposed by the historical materialism of Marx, abandoned the ideology and remained a supporter of social liberalism throughout his life.

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