Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. His family sent him to Jesuit boarding schools to be educated, and he later entered the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1881.One of his professors at the university was Dr Joseph Bell, who became the model for Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It was Bell who drummed into Doyle's head the importance of using his innate powers of observation to help him deduce the nature of a patient's affliction.

While in school, Conan Doyle began writing to earn a little extra money. He worked for a time as a ship's doctor, then opened his own medical practice near Portsmouth. In his spare time, he did more writing. His third attempt at a novel was A Study in Scarlet, the 1887 story which introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. So successful was this novel, and the Holmes novels and stories which followed, that Conan Doyle could afford to give up his medical practice and devote himself to writing full time.

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The stories proved enormously successful, but Conan Doyle tired of his own creation, and in 1894 he killed Holmes off in The Final Problem. But he underestimated the popularity of his creation and was inundated with letters of protest, including one from a female reader who addressed him simply as "You Brute!". He bowed to the inevitable, and revived the character of Holmes, who appeared in numerous short stories over the next 23 years.

Conan Doyle served as a doctor in the Boer War, and on his return he wrote two books defending England's participation in that conflict. It was for these books that he received his knighthood in 1902.

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After the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle became interested in spiritualism. He was convinced that it was possible to communicate with the dead, and his views led to a certain amount of ridicule from more mainstream society. Doyle died of heart failure in 1930. A week after his death, the Spiritualist Association held a séance in London’s Royal Albert Hall to contact him.

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The first of many Sherlock Holmes societies was founded in 1934, and such organizations still debate the finer points of the detective’s work. Dozens of books and articles treat Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson like actual historical figures, filling in gaps and calculating dates from clues in the stories. More than 75 actors have portrayed Holmes in more than 200 films. Today’s audiences may choose from Robert Downey Jr.’s steampunk action movies or Benedict Cumberbatch’s contemporary television series. For more than a century, Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most widely known fictional characters ever created.