Alfred Chilton Pearson FBA (8 October 1861 – 2 January 1935) was an English classical scholar, noted for his work on Greek tragedy.

Born and schooled in London, Pearson graduated with distinction from Christ's College, Cambridge, before pursuing a career in law, business and teaching.

Porson was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1924, the year in which he released his Oxford Classical Text of the works of the fifth-century tragedian Sophocles, but was forced to resign his academic post in 1928 by increasing ill-health.

[1] He had been invited to apply by John Percival Postgate, the university's professor of Latin,[2]: 455  and obtained a Doctor of Letters degree from Cambridge upon his appointment.

[1] Shortly after his appointment, he became a governor of Dulwich College, a public school in London, and an honorary fellow of his alma mater, Christ's.

[6] From 1926, Pearson began to suffer from what his obituarist George Chatterton Richards called a "nervous condition", following the death of Postgate in a bicycle accident.

His wife, Edith, died in 1930: Pearson's biographer and successor as Regius Professor, Donald Struan Robertson, states that he remained in "total incapacity" from that year until his death.

In 1914, he wrote to Robert that the First World War was "a terrible crime against humanity", but that Britain's involvement in it was required by "the cause of freedom and relief from military despotism".