16 Facts About Lorenz Oken

Lorenz Oken was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist.

Lorenz Oken went on to the University of Gottingen, where he became a Privatdozent, and shortened his name to Oken.

Lorenz Oken built on Schelling's work, producing a synthesis of what he held Schelling to have achieved.

Lorenz Oken produced the seven-volume series Allgemeine Naturgeschichte fur alle Stande, with engravings by Johann Susemihl, and published in Stuttgart by Hoffman between 1839 and 1841.

Lorenz Oken showed the importance of the discovery as an illustration of his system.

The reputation of the young Privatdozent of Gottingen had reached the ear of Johann von Goethe, and in 1807 Lorenz Oken was invited to fill the office of Extraordinary Professor of the Medical Sciences at the University of Jena.

Lorenz Oken selected for the subject of his inaugural discourse his ideas on the "Signification of the Bones of the Skull," based on a discovery of the previous year.

The professor stated that Lorenz Oken told him of his discovery when journeying in 1806 to the island of Wangerooge.

In 1809 Lorenz Oken extended his system to the mineral world, arranging the ores, not according to the metals, but according to their combinations with oxygen, acids and sulphur.

In 1816 Lorenz Oken began publication of his well-known periodical, Isis, eine encyclopadische Zeitschrift, vorzuglich fur Naturgeschichte, vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie.

Lorenz Oken made arrangements for its issue at Rudolstadt, and this continued uninterruptedly until the year 1848.

In 1821 Lorenz Oken promulgated in Isis the first idea of the annual general meetings of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, which was realized in the following year, when the first meeting was held at Leipzig.

In 1828 Lorenz Oken resumed his original humble duties as privatdocent in the newly established University of Munich, and soon afterwards he was appointed ordinary professor in the same university.

Lorenz Oken was appointed in 1833 to the professorship of natural history in the then recently established University of Zurich.

All of Lorenz Oken's writings are deductive illustrations of an assumed principle, which, with other philosophers of the transcendental school, he deemed equal to the explanation of all the mysteries of nature.

In 1832, Lorenz Oken was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.