Eduard Böcking (May 20, 1802 – May 3, 1870) was a famous German legal scholar who taught at University Bonn for 35 years and who wrote many scholarly works considered to be treasure troves of rich knowledge and ideas that have stood the test of time. He is best known for his editions of, and commentaries on, the legal works of classical antiquity.

Eduard Böcking was born May 20, 1802 in Trarbach an der Mosel, and died May 3, 1870 in Bonn, Germany. He comes from a Protestant family that immigrated from Kent to the Netherlands and the Rhineland-Moselle in the 16th century. In 1792 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found hospitality at the house of his father Louis Bocking (1758-1829) a wealthy merchant and vineyard owner in Trarbach. Bocking's childhood home is the baroque villa in Traben Trarbach which is now the Mittelmosel Museum. As a boy he met Napoleon I at his uncles house in Kaiserslautern who took a liking to him and said, "il deviendra mon brave officier". Bocking studied in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Bonn, Berlin and Gottingen and received his PhD in Jurisprudence in 1822 for his thesis De Mancipii Causis. He also studied philosophy, legal history and literature and gave private lectures in Berlin in 1826. He lived at the historical Nicolaishaus in Berlin. Bocking was appointed associate professor in 1829 and at his request transferred to University Bonn the same year where he later was promoted to full time professor in 1835-1870. He was affectionately referred to as the Mightly Bull of the law faculty. The depth and scope of his knowledge extended far beyond the various branches of jurisprudence to other areas namely philology. The shapness and energy of his mind and tireless desire for work gave testimony to his iron scholarly diligence that promoted him to the forefront as representative of historical jurisprudence and elevated him to the status of one of the most important scholars of his time. He also exhibited manual dexterity with his calligraphic art, book binding and wood turning. In a peculiar way his irritable and sincere nature and harshness of character was mixed with an almost childlike softness of disposition and a warm attachment to everything that was dear to his heart. With filial piety he cherished the memory of his parents well into old age, his friends from old and new felt the loyal heart even in the sometimes rough form of encounter, and his warm emotional life also gave him direction to which we owe him the translation of the Moselle poems of Ausonius and Venantius Fortunatus which grew from his love for his motherland Moselle. Bocking experienced the joy and suffering of life in abundance. Gifted by nature with an agile body and stately appearance, married young and happy to his beautiful and beloved wife in 1830, blessed with five children, close friends with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and other important men near and far, endowed with fortune which he used in his sensible way primarily to build his villa on the Rhine and to facilitate and expand his famous library, who was highly respected as a writer and teacher so at the end of his fourth decade he stood there as a richly blessed and enviable man but just a few years later it was his turn to mourn the long suffering and joyful death of the one he loved most on earth and the passing of others dear to him, we hear him complain about the feeling of his own morbidity that has been growing ever more acutely over the years and about other adversities that seem all too likely to weaken his courage, however, the dwindling joy in life did not diminish his desire and strength for works faithful fulfillment of his profession and we see him working diligently up until his death with the old iron industry and full freshness of mind which remained with him until the end of his life which he knew was near when he completed his last academic semester in March 1870. He died from pneumonia on May 3,1870 and is buried with his wife at Alter Friedhof in Bonn, Germany.

His eldest son Adolf Theodor Böcking was a German-American Naturalist who was one of the first to study and record the Rhea americana or Nandu in its natural habitat of Uruguay in 1860. Bocking received his PhD in Zoology for his thesis on the flightless bird in 1863, he immigrated to the US in 1864.

• Translation of and commentary on the Mosella of Ausonius (1828)
• Corpus legum sive Brachylogus (1829)
• Commentary (with Clemens August Carl Klenze) on the Institutiones of Gaius and Justinian (1829)
• Commentary on the Fragmenta of Ulpian (1831)
• Commentary on the Interpretamenta of Dositheus (1832)
• Commentary on the Institutiones of Gaius (1837)
• Critical edition of the Notitia Dignitatum (1839–50, 5 volumes; index 1853)
• Edition of the Moselle River poems of Venantius Fortunatus (1845)
• Edition of the collected German, French, and Latin works of August Wilhelm Schlegel (1846–48, 16 volumes)
• Edition of the collected works of Ulrich von Hutten, entitled Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia (1859–62, 5 volumes), with two supplements, Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1864–70), and a bibliographic index, Index bibliographicus Huttenianus (1858)

• "Böcking". Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (in German). Vol. 3 (4th ed.). 1890. pp. 101–102.