Fick

Fick, AUGUST, an eminent philologist, was born at Petershagen, near Minden, 5th May 1833, studied philology under Benfey at Göttingen from 1852 to 1856, and taught in the gymnasium until his appointment as professor in the university there in 1876. In 1887 he was called to a chair at Breslau, and he retired in 1891. His Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen (1870; 4th ed. 1890) is a stupendous monument of learning, albeit its value is somewhat impaired by the over-audacity of its reconstruction of the primitive parent-speech. Other works are Die Griechischen Personennamen (1874), Die ehemalige Spracheinheit der Indogermanen Europas (1875), and Die Homerische Ilias, in der ursprünglichen Sprachform wiederhergestellt (vol. i. 1885).