Oken (originally Ockenfuss), LORENZ, naturalist, was born at Bohlsbach, in Baden, August 1, 1779. He studied at Würzburg and Göttingen; became extra-ordinary professor of Medicine at Jena in 1807; in 1812 he was appointed ordinary professor of Natural Science; and in 1816 he commenced the publication of a journal partly scientific and partly political, called Iris, which led to government interference and his resignation. In 1828 he obtained a professorship in the newly-established university of Munich, but in 1832 exchanged it for another at Zurich, where he died 11th August 1851. Oken aimed at constructing all knowledge a priori, and thus setting forth the system of nature in its universal relations. His system of natural science is a nature-philosophy, which, though decried as transcendental and a deduction from foregone conclusions, was fertile in suggestive ideas. It was he who wrought out the theory, claimed by Goethe, and now exploded, that the skull is but a modified vertebra.
His principal works are his Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie (1808–11; Eng. trans. 1847), his Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte (3 vols. 1813–27), and Allgemeine Naturgeschichte (17 vols. 1833–45). See works on Oken by Ecker (1880) and Guttler (1884), and see Sir Richard Owen's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica.