O HIGGINS
OPPERT
their distinguished compatriot, and they
raised a bronze statue in memory of him
after his death. D. Mar. 9, 1851.
O HIGGINS, General Bernardo, Chilean soldier and statesman. B. Aug. 20, 1776. Ed. Richmond College, London. He was a natural son of the Marquis O Higgins, Governor of Chile, an Irish Catholic who had settled in South America. He developed advanced ideas, largely through the influence of General Miranda, and joined the revolutionaries in Chile. In 1813 he was appointed to the command of the national forces. Five years later the Spaniards were expelled, and O Higgins was entrusted with the administration of the country. His dictatorship was very beneficent and progressive and anti-clerical, but in 1823 he quietly yielded to the clamour for a constitutional regime and retired to Peru. D. Oct. 24, 1842.
OKEN, Professor Larenz, M.D., Ph.D., German natural philosopher. B. Aug. 1, 1779. Ed. Wiirtzburg and Gottingen Universities. His real name was Ocken- fuss (which he himself changed to Oken), and he was the son of a peasant and supported himself during his education. In 1807 he was appointed extraordinary, and in 1812 ordinary, professor of medicine at Jena University, but his lectures dealt mainly with what was then called natural philosophy. In 1817 he founded a perio dical, Isis, of so free and advanced a character that the Government asked him either to suppress it or resign his chair. Oken nobly chose the latter alternative, and Isis continued its invaluable work in educating Germany. In 1822 he organized the first Natural History Congress to be held in Germany. He was appointed pro fessor of natural history at Munich Univer sity in 1828, and at Zurich in 1832. Oken expounds a Pantheistic philosophy of nature in his chief works, the Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte (3 vols., 1813-27), the Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie (3 vols., 1808-11), and the Allegemeine Natur- 565
geschichtefiir alle Stande (13 vols., 1833-45 ;
Eng. trans., Elements of Physio- Philosophy,
1844-47). He mainly followed Schilling
in philosophy, and contended that man
and all things are ideas in the divine mind ;
but his evolutionary and Monistic scheme,
though naturally full of errors, rendered
great service in preparing Germany for the
later science of evolution. D. Aug. 11, 1851.
OLDFIELD, Josiah, D.C.L., physician and reformer. Ed. Newport Grammar School and Oxford (second class in the Honours School). He entered Lincoln s Inn, and was called to the Bar and practised on the Oxford circuit. Turning to medicine, he qualified at St. Bartholo mew s, and founded the Humanitarian Hospital of St. Francis at London. In 1903 he was appointed Warden and Senior Physician of the Lady Margaret Hospital, Bromley. Dr. Oldfield won his degree from Oxford by a thesis on capital punish ment, and he founded the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (1901). He was Chairman of the Romilly Society in 1910 ; and he raised and commanded a Casualty Clearing Station and a Field Ambulance during the War. In the com pilation Do We Believe ? (1905) he says : " We all need a wider conception [than the Christian] of God as the basis of our creed" (p. 136). He is a Theist, and has mystic ideas about the soul.
OMBONI, Professor Giacomo, Italian geologist. B. June 29, 1829. Ed. Pavia University. Omboni interrupted his studies in 1848 to take part in the war against Austria and the Papacy. He returned to the university in 1851, and was appointed teacher in 1853. In 1869 he became professor of geology at Padua University, and he was one of the leading geologists of Italy. He wrote a number of school manuals of natural history as well as a large number of papers and works on his science.
OPPERT, Professor Jules, Ph.D.,
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