1859–1930 · British physician and writer · creator of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician, knighted in 1902, who wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes. He gave Holmes the word “Elementary” and gave him the habit of calling Watson “my dear Watson” — but he never once joined them into a sentence. The most famous line his character ever “said” is one he never wrote, which makes it less a forgery than a collaboration between an author and a century of readers.