Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in Berlin, it expanded internationally in the 1960s, and through mergers in the 1990s and a sale to venture capitalists it fused with Wolters Kluwer and eventually became part of Springer Nature in 2015. Springer has major offices in Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, and New York City. History Julius Springer founded Springer-Verlag in Berlin in 1842 and his son Ferdinand Springer grew it from a small firm of 4 employees into Germany's then second-largest academic publisher with 65 staff in 1872. In 1964, Springer expanded its business internationally, opening an office in New York City. Offices in Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, and Delhi soon followed. In 1999, the academic publishing company BertelsmannSpringer was formed after the media and entertainment company Bertelsmann bought a majority stake in Springer-Verlag. In 2003, the British investment groups Cinven and Candover bought BertelsmannSpringer from Bertelsmann. They merged the company in 2004 with the Dutch publisher Kluwer Academic Publishers which they bought from Wolters Kluwer in 2002, to form Springer Science+Business Media. In 2006, Springer acquired Humana Press. Springer acquired the open-access publisher BioMed Central in October 2008 for an undisclosed amount. In 2009, Cinven and Candover sold Springer to two private equity firms, EQT Partners and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, confirmed in February 2010 after the competition authorities in the US and in Europe approved the transfer. In 2011, Springer acquired Pharma Marketing and Publishing Services (MPS) from Wolters Kluwer. In 2013, the London-based private equity firm BC Partners acquired a majority stake in Springer from EQT and GIC for $4.4 billion. In January 2015, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group / Nature Publishing Group and Springer Science+Business Media announced a merger. in May 2015 they concluded the transaction and formed a new joint venture company, Springer Nature with Holtzbrinck in the majority 53% share and BC Partners retaining 47% interest in the company. Products In 1996, Springer launched electronic book and journal content on its SpringerLink site. SpringerImages was launched in 2008. In 2009, SpringerMaterials, a platform for accessing the Landolt-Börnstein database of research and information on materials and their properties, was launched. AuthorMapper is a free online tool for visualizing scientific research that enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps, helping