Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Trained in medicine at Edinburgh, he modelled the detective's diagnostic manner on one of his teachers, and the stories he published in the Strand Magazine from 1891 made him one of the most widely read authors of his age. He also wrote historical novels, science fiction including The Lost World, and, in later life, extensive works of spiritualist advocacy.