bio notes:
born: 4/11/1862
died: 9/28/1943
born as: Richard Austin Freeman

Popular English author novels and short stories featuring the fictional character John Thorndyke, a pathologist-detective. Educated as a physician and surgeon, Freeman practiced in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where he contracted a disease. Forced by ill health to retire from practice in 1904, he began to write fiction. The Red Thumb Mark (1907) was the first of many works featuring Thorndyke. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature