British · 1859–1930
Scottish physician and writer who created Sherlock Holmes and couldn't kill him. Born in Edinburgh, trained in medicine, he based Holmes partly on his professor Joseph Bell. The detective debuted in 1887 and appeared in four novels and fifty-six stories. Doyle tired of Holmes and killed him at Reichenbach Falls; public outcry forced resurrection. He also wrote historical novels, science fiction (The Lost World), and advocated strenuously for spiritualism in later life. The Holmes stories define detective fiction; their influence is inescapable.