History of School and University Education 1935 – 1963 Prof. Karl Überla was born on January 29, 1935 in Leitmeritz, Sudetenland. His father earned an M.D. and practiced as a general physician in Pürstein, Sudetenland. The family was forced to leave Tchechoslowakia in 1945 and settled in Bayreuth, Germany. The hard times following the war and fleeing his home country to start a new life only made Karl Überla stronger. Karl Überla received his secondary education from 1946 to 1954 at the Humanistisches Gymnasium Bayreuth and received the Abitur in 1954 with honors. He then studied medicine at the well-known Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Innsbruck and Freiburg. Simultaneously, he studied psychology at the Freiburg University. Karl Überla received his Diplom-Psychologe degree in 1962 and his Doctor of Medicine in 1963. In 1962, Prof. Überla accepted a visiting research grant and spent a year with Prof. R. B. Cattell in Urbana, Illinois USA. Prof. Cattell became his personal mentor. In 1963, Dr. Karl Überla started to program the ILIAC IV, which was the biggest computer worldwide. He also studied factor analysis and began writing his first book, titled “Factor Analysis.” This book was published in 1968, was translated in several different languages, and was the standard reader in the education of psychologists in Germany for two decades. Prof. Überla currently resides in Icking, a small community in Bavaria close to Munich. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, golfing, and climbing in the nearby mountains, and sailing. As an educated student of the Humanistic Gymnasium, three Latin sentences have accompanied his life: Errare humanum est (Hieronymus), Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo (Ovid), and Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (Horace).