Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh. He went to Stonyhurst school and then studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where one of his professors provided the model for his most famous creation. He began publishing stories in 1879 and his first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887. Holmes soon became an enormously popular figure and Doyle went on to write many stories and novels about him. He also published historical fiction, plays, essays and poems on a wide variety of subjects. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died on 7 July 1930.