 Again, Hayek was born in 1899, and born in Vienna. That is to say, Hayek grew up in a glorious age of Viennese culture only to see it evaporate before his eyes with WWI, the Great Depression, the rise of socialism and fascism, WWII, and the Cold War. Hayek fought in WWI. He was among those who left Vienna in the early 1930s never to return. He experienced WWII in his adopted home of Great Britain. Like others of his generation, these experiences were pivotal. He saw totalitarianism distorting science and scholarship, as did two of his philosophical friends: Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper. Despite their differences, Hayek drew inspiration from and helped promote the work of Polanyi and Popper. Totalitarian systems inevitably end up being hostile to the critical attitude at the heart of scientific inquiry. Hayek, Polanyi and Popper all saw this in the 1930s and 1940s, and in their separate ways sought to describe and defend the science of a free society.