Nan Dunbar

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Nan Dunbar (18 July 1928 – 3 April 2005) was a British Classics scholar and tutor at Somerville College, Oxford. She is best known for editing Aristophanes' The Birds, published in 1995 after nearly forty years of work.

Born in Glasgow, she attended Hutcheson's Girls School and became the first in her family to go to university. She earned first-class honours at the University of Glasgow and received many awards, including Most Distinguished Arts Graduate in 1950. She then studied at Girton College, Cambridge, where she achieved firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos.

Dunbar started her academic career as a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in 1952. She then returned to Cambridge as a fellow and lecturer at Girton (1952–1957). In 1957 she moved to the University of St Andrews. In 1965 she became a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

At Somerville she helped run the college, including admissions work, serving as steward of the chapel, sitting on the finance committee, and serving as Vice-Principal from 1983 to 1985. A portrait of her, bequeathed by her husband, hangs in the Somerville Library, and a Himalayan birch tree was planted in the garden in her honour.

Her Birds edition took almost forty years to complete and was published with a comprehensive introduction and commentary in 1995. An abridged edition for students appeared from Oxford University Press in 1997.