Pearson

Pearson plc is a British multinational education and publishing company headquartered in London. It originated in the 19th century as a construction firm founded by Samuel Pearson and later diversified into information services, publishing, and education. In the modern era, it is best known for its educational content, assessments, and digital learning platforms used by schools, higher education, and corporate training worldwide.

Pearson has a history of major corporate moves; it owned the Financial Times from 1957 until selling it to Nikkei in 2015. In 2013, Pearson merged its Penguin Group with Random House—owned by Bertelsmann—to form Penguin Random House, one of the world’s largest book publishers. In the 2010s and 2020s, Pearson shifted toward education technology and assessment services, focusing on digital delivery of learning materials and data-driven analytics.

Pearson is also a surname. Notable bearer Karl Pearson (1857–1936), a prominent English mathematician and statistician who helped establish correlation and regression concepts; the Pearson correlation coefficient is named after him.