Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer best known for his creation of the famous detective character Sherlock Holmes. He was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, into a prosperous Irish-Catholic family. Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a doctor before turning to a full-time career in writing.

Conan Doyle's most significant literary contribution is the creation of Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant and astute detective with exceptional deductive reasoning skills. The first appearance of Holmes was in the novel "A Study in Scarlet," published in 1887. Holmes quickly became immensely popular, and Conan Doyle continued to write numerous short stories and novels featuring the detective and his loyal friend, Dr. John Watson.

Despite the immense success of the Sherlock Holmes series, Conan Doyle grew somewhat weary of his creation and wanted to focus on other types of writing. He even tried to kill off Holmes in the story "The Final Problem," but public demand for more Holmes stories was so intense that he eventually brought the character back in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and continued to write more Holmes stories.

Apart from his detective fiction, Conan Doyle wrote historical novels, science fiction, plays, and non-fiction works. He was also involved in spiritualism and wrote extensively on the subject. Conan Doyle was knighted in 1902 for his contributions to literature.