Karl Raimund Popper was the man who put science to bed, inventing the idea that a theory is only worthwhile if it can be refuted - in other words, if it can't be tested, it's bollocks.

​

Born in Austria in 1902, he started out flirting with Marxism, but soon realised that dogma wasn't his thing. In ‘The Logic of Scientific Research’, he lambasted positivism and demanded that science be humble enough to admit when it was wrong.

​

He fled Nazism for New Zealand and then went on to shine in the UK, where he criticised anything that smelled of totalitarianism, including his former idols. He died in 1994, leaving behind a world that still insists on believing in infallible theories - but he tried to warn us.