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1THE LIFEKarl Popper was born at Himmelhof, in the district of Vienna, on 28July 1902, the last of three children after two sisters. His family was ofJewish origin, and the atmosphere in which he grew up was, as he putit, ‘decidedly bookish’ (UQ: 10): his father, Simon, was a lawyer andhis mother, Jenny Schiff, came from a family in which music wasenthusiastically cultivated. The personalities of both parents made theirmark on the child’s development. The father, ‘more of a scholar than alawyer’ (UQ: 11), translated the classics, greatly appreciatedphilosophy, and took a keen interest in social problems. He gave theyoung Karl numerous opportunities to channel his precociousintelligence: for example, the portraits of Schopenhauer and Darwinhanging in his father’s studio aroused in him a questioning curiosity,‘even before [he] had learned to read’ (NSEM: 339). His mother, on theother hand, passed on to him such a passion for music that between1920 and 1922 he seriously thought of taking it up as a career. Evenafter this idea was abandoned, his love for music did not diminish andindeed was fundamental in the development of his philosophicalthinking.This stimulating climate favoured a spontaneous interest in books,but also in the political events that marked his early adolescence andculminated in the First World War and the ensuing collapse of theAustro-Hungarian Empire. Meanwhile Karl attended theRealgymnasium, but he was not satisfied with the instruction hereceived there. After a long illness that kept him at home for more thantwo months, he became convinced that his class no longer offered anyscope for significant progress. He therefore left in late 1918 andenrolled at the University of Vienna, but it was only in 1922 that he finallysat the entrance examination (the Matura) and became a properlymatriculated student. He later recalled that he wanted to study not in