Johann August Nauck (18 September 1822 – 3 August 1892) was a German classical scholar and critic. His chief work was the Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (TrGF).
Nauck was born at Auerstedt in present-day Thuringia. He studied at the University of Halle as a student of Gottfried Bernhardy and Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier. In 1853 he became an adjunct under August Meineke at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin. After a brief stint as an educator at the Grauen Kloster (1858), he relocated to St. Petersburg, where in 1869, he was appointed professor of Greek at the historical-philological institute.[1]
Nauck was one of the most distinguished textual critics of his day,[2] although, like PH Peerlkamp, he was fond of altering a text in accordance with what he thought the author must, or ought to, have written.[3] Nauck was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1885.[4]
The most important of his writings and translations, all of which deal with Greek language and literature (especially the tragedians) are as follows: