Johann August Nauck was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 classical scholar and critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

.

Nauck was born at Auerstedt

Auerstedt

Auerstedt is a municipality in the Weimarer Land district of Thuringia, Germany. It lies northeast of Weimar. On October 14, 1806, the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, a decisive victory for Napoleon I of France, took place near Auerstedt. As a result, the leader of the victorious French forces,...

 in Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

. After studying at the University of Halle and holding educational posts in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, he immigrated in 1859 to St Petersburg, where he became a professor of Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 at the Imperial Historico-Philological Institute.

Nauck was one of the most distinguished textual critics of his day, although, like PH Peerlkamp

Petrus Hoffman Peerlkamp

Petrus Hofman Peerlkamp , Dutch classical scholar and critic, descended from a family of French refugees named Perlechamp, was born at Groningen....

, he was fond of altering a text in accordance with what he thought the author must, or ought to, have written.

The most important of his writings and translations, all of which deal with Greek language and literature

Greek literature

Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...

 (especially the tragedians) are the following:

• Euripides, Tragedies and Fragments (1854, 3rd ed., 1871)
• Studio, Euripidea (1859–1862)
• Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (1856, last ed., 1889), his chief work
• Index to the Fragments (1892)
• Text of Sophocles: Sophokles. Erstes Baendchen: Allgemeine Einleitung. Aias. Philoktetes (Berlin 1860 4th ed.); Sophoclis Tragoediae (Berlin 1867); Sophokles. Erstes Baendchen: Allgemeine Einleitung. Aias.(Berlin 1877, 7th. ed., 1882, 8th ed.).
• revised edition of Schneidewin
  Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin
  Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin , was a German classical scholar.-Biography:He was born at Helmstedt. In 1833 he became a teacher at the Brunswick gymnasium...
  
  's annotated Sophocles (1856, etc.)
• texts of Homer
  Homer
  In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
  
  , Odyssey
  Odyssey
  The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
  
  (1874) and Iliad
  Iliad
  The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
  
  (1877–1879)
• the fragments of Aristophanes of Byzantium
  Aristophanes of Byzantium
  Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...
  
   (1848)
• Porphyrius of Tyre
  Porphyry (philosopher)
  Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
  
   (1860, 2nd ed., 1886)
• Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica (1884)
• Lexikon Vindobonense (1867), a meagre compilation of the 14th or I5th century.

Further reading

Memoir by T Zielinski, in Bursian

Conrad Bursian

Conrad Bursian was a German philologist and archaeologist.He was born at Mutzschen in Saxony. When his parents moved to Leipzig, he received his early education at Thomasschule zu Leipzig, and entered the university in 1847...

's Biographisches Jahrbuch (1894), and JE Sandys

John Edwin Sandys

Sir John Edwin Sandys FBA , was a classical scholar.He was born at Leicester on 19 May 1844, a son of the Reverend Timothy Sandys of the Church Missionary Society and Rebecca . Living at first in India, he returned to England at the age of eleven, and was educated at the Church Missionary Society...

, History of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908), pp. 149-152.