While in secondary school, he developed a strong interest in natural history and started to study microscopic biology at home.
He married his wife, Jean Blose Jackson, on 28 August 1948, and their first son, Paul Robert Ogren, was born on 24 June 1949.
His doctoral thesis was entitled "Concepts of Early Tapeworm Development Derived From Comparative Embryology of Oncospheres".
[1] He began his academic career in 1953 as an assistant professor of biology at Ursinus College, remaining until 1957.
[1] In 1987 he began a series of publications in association with Dr. Masaharu Kawakatsu entitled the "Land Planarian Indices Series" where they reviewed the taxonomy of all land planarian species known at the time.