It's a fascinating combination: the random event of a birth and how nature and nurture interact to form a talented or heroic personality. This often endows a simple set of four walls and a roof with something approaching a mythical status.
But one of the challenges for those interpreting birthplace museums is that most of the interesting things in a person's life often occur away from their birthplace.
"A lot of Johnson's life happened away from this house," says Joanne Wilson, the museums and heritage officer at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace House in Lichfield.
"But Johnson's father built the house a year before he was born, so the building is very closely linked to Johnson and his family. And we have actually got a strong collection of personalia that helps us build this picture of him as a person rather than just a literary giant."
Wilson also says the museum has expanded the story of the house beyond a narrow focus on Johnson, who compiled the first comprehensive English Dictionary: "There is always the challenge that you can have quite a limited scope for events and exhibitions as a museum devoted to one person. I think we get round that quite well by broadening it out to general 18th-century history and local history."
The museum has been making the most of the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birthday on 18 September 1709. A range of tercentenary celebrations have been taking place in Lichfield and the museum has been working with Dr Johnson's House in London, where he lived for more than 10 years.
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum is not huge, like many birthplace museums. An extreme example of this is railway engineer George Stephenson's birthplace in Northumbria, which is just one room, a 1750s cottage that originally held four pit families.
"The place is little more than a shrine, but it is located on a good riverside walk so it retains some quiet and seclusion," says Hugh Dixon, the National Trust's historic properties adviser for Yorkshire and the north-east region.
"It is visited by railway enthusiasts from all over the world, regional and local historians, schoolchildren, families walking by the river and friends wanting a cup of tea."
Birthplace museums are many things to many people: places of pilgrimage and a chance to explore and indulge literary, historic or scientific curiosities. Meeting the expectations of a wide variety of visitors - children, historians, educationalists - is a challenge.
This is certainly the case at the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, which attracts about 30,000 visitors a year.
Paul Baker, museums and collections officer at Broxtowe Borough Council, which manages the property, says visitors can be divided into four categories: Lawrence enthusiasts; those interested in Victorian history; those interested in mining history; and day trippers. It caters for this broad spectrum of visitors by using guides who can match their tours to the needs of visitors.
"When you go into the house there are no interpretative devices at all," says Baker. "But if a visitor has a specific interest we can tailor the interpretation to them. It can be complicated if we have a tour and there is one enthusiast who is asking very specific questions about texts - you can see other people's eyes glaze over. I'd imagine that lots of birthplace museums have similar issues."
Bringing the experience to life
Kath Hall is one of the guides at the Lawrence museum. She uses its Edwardian interiors and artefacts to bring the family's history to life, and to generate the childhood experiences that inspired the author's work.
Hall says visitors are often overwhelmed: "Some people are very emotional. You can see it in their faces and hear it in the wonderful comments they make."
It seems many visitors to birthplace museums have a strong reaction. Isaac Newton's shire, is set in idyllic sheep-farming countryside, and many see it as a shrine.
Margaret Winn has worked at Woolsthorpe Manor for 17 years. She says: "People visit the apple tree which sprang from the root of the iconic 17th-century tree. Some fall on their knees like pilgrims. An old gentleman from India was in tears, recalling that he learned about Newton in the mud hut where he went to school."
Overseas visitors often have a connection to birthplace museums, none more so than Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum, where a third of its 7,600 annual visitors are from the US. Carnegie, who was born in a one-room 18th-century weaver's cottage in Dunfermline, emigrated with his impoverished parents to America where he found his fortune.
His museum is managed by Lorna Owers, helped by three part-time seasonal staff, on behalf of the Carnegie Dumfermline Trust. She recently supervised a £750,000 refurbishment of the Memorial Hall that adjoins the birthplace.
Old display cases were removed, while touchscreens, new lighting and mobile units were put in, making space for lectures, temporary exhibitions and corporate events. A new website is on its way.
But not all birthplace museums are on a small scale. Two in particular have benefited from 18th- and 19th-century fashions for literary tourism: the Robert Burns cottage in Ayrshire and Shakespeare's home in Stratford upon Avon. At both, the birthplace has become the focal point of a much grander conglomerate of buildings, museums, study centres and archives, which make up a heritage trail.
Controversies are raging within the National Trust Scotland (NTS) over the funding of the Robert Burns National Heritage Park in Alloway. The project will total £21m, of which the trust still has to find £3.8m. Fundraising exercises include eBay auctions of fishing rights and a haunted castle experience.
The Burns investment is contentious. Last May the trade union Prospect said the Burns park was at the expense of mothballing four NTS properties and up to 90 jobs. Meanwhile, Nat Edwards, the director of the Burns Museum, says the investment in the site will transform the Heritage Park, which currently hosts 300,000 visitors a year, into a modern museum experience.
Work on the museum is still in its early stages, even though the original aim was to be ready for Burns' 250th anniversary this year. Completion is scheduled for summer 2010.
In April, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust opened Life, Love and Legacy, an introductory exhibition and audiovisual experience that cost £500,000. The site in Stratford-upon-Avon is extremely popular and is one of five historic buildings associated with Shakespeare that is run by the trust.
The new visitor centre successfully filters the large numbers of visitors into smaller groups, which improves circulation through the small rooms and narrow staircases in the terrace of Elizabethan houses where Shakespeare grew up.
Large numbers of visitors anxious to pay their respects are often at odds with the fragile infrastructure of many birthplace mu-seums. But the public's fascination with where writers, composers and scientists were born shows no signs of waning and these types of museums will continue to have to deal with the crowds.
Corinna Lotz is a freelance journalist
But one of the challenges for those interpreting birthplace museums is that most of the interesting things in a person's life often occur away from their birthplace.
"A lot of Johnson's life happened away from this house," says Joanne Wilson, the museums and heritage officer at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace House in Lichfield.
"But Johnson's father built the house a year before he was born, so the building is very closely linked to Johnson and his family. And we have actually got a strong collection of personalia that helps us build this picture of him as a person rather than just a literary giant."
Wilson also says the museum has expanded the story of the house beyond a narrow focus on Johnson, who compiled the first comprehensive English Dictionary: "There is always the challenge that you can have quite a limited scope for events and exhibitions as a museum devoted to one person. I think we get round that quite well by broadening it out to general 18th-century history and local history."
The museum has been making the most of the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birthday on 18 September 1709. A range of tercentenary celebrations have been taking place in Lichfield and the museum has been working with Dr Johnson's House in London, where he lived for more than 10 years.
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum is not huge, like many birthplace museums. An extreme example of this is railway engineer George Stephenson's birthplace in Northumbria, which is just one room, a 1750s cottage that originally held four pit families.
"The place is little more than a shrine, but it is located on a good riverside walk so it retains some quiet and seclusion," says Hugh Dixon, the National Trust's historic properties adviser for Yorkshire and the north-east region.
"It is visited by railway enthusiasts from all over the world, regional and local historians, schoolchildren, families walking by the river and friends wanting a cup of tea."
Birthplace museums are many things to many people: places of pilgrimage and a chance to explore and indulge literary, historic or scientific curiosities. Meeting the expectations of a wide variety of visitors - children, historians, educationalists - is a challenge.
This is certainly the case at the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, which attracts about 30,000 visitors a year.
Paul Baker, museums and collections officer at Broxtowe Borough Council, which manages the property, says visitors can be divided into four categories: Lawrence enthusiasts; those interested in Victorian history; those interested in mining history; and day trippers. It caters for this broad spectrum of visitors by using guides who can match their tours to the needs of visitors.
"When you go into the house there are no interpretative devices at all," says Baker. "But if a visitor has a specific interest we can tailor the interpretation to them. It can be complicated if we have a tour and there is one enthusiast who is asking very specific questions about texts - you can see other people's eyes glaze over. I'd imagine that lots of birthplace museums have similar issues."
Bringing the experience to life
Kath Hall is one of the guides at the Lawrence museum. She uses its Edwardian interiors and artefacts to bring the family's history to life, and to generate the childhood experiences that inspired the author's work.
Hall says visitors are often overwhelmed: "Some people are very emotional. You can see it in their faces and hear it in the wonderful comments they make."
It seems many visitors to birthplace museums have a strong reaction. Isaac Newton's shire, is set in idyllic sheep-farming countryside, and many see it as a shrine.
Margaret Winn has worked at Woolsthorpe Manor for 17 years. She says: "People visit the apple tree which sprang from the root of the iconic 17th-century tree. Some fall on their knees like pilgrims. An old gentleman from India was in tears, recalling that he learned about Newton in the mud hut where he went to school."
Overseas visitors often have a connection to birthplace museums, none more so than Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum, where a third of its 7,600 annual visitors are from the US. Carnegie, who was born in a one-room 18th-century weaver's cottage in Dunfermline, emigrated with his impoverished parents to America where he found his fortune.
His museum is managed by Lorna Owers, helped by three part-time seasonal staff, on behalf of the Carnegie Dumfermline Trust. She recently supervised a £750,000 refurbishment of the Memorial Hall that adjoins the birthplace.
Old display cases were removed, while touchscreens, new lighting and mobile units were put in, making space for lectures, temporary exhibitions and corporate events. A new website is on its way.
But not all birthplace museums are on a small scale. Two in particular have benefited from 18th- and 19th-century fashions for literary tourism: the Robert Burns cottage in Ayrshire and Shakespeare's home in Stratford upon Avon. At both, the birthplace has become the focal point of a much grander conglomerate of buildings, museums, study centres and archives, which make up a heritage trail.
Controversies are raging within the National Trust Scotland (NTS) over the funding of the Robert Burns National Heritage Park in Alloway. The project will total £21m, of which the trust still has to find £3.8m. Fundraising exercises include eBay auctions of fishing rights and a haunted castle experience.
The Burns investment is contentious. Last May the trade union Prospect said the Burns park was at the expense of mothballing four NTS properties and up to 90 jobs. Meanwhile, Nat Edwards, the director of the Burns Museum, says the investment in the site will transform the Heritage Park, which currently hosts 300,000 visitors a year, into a modern museum experience.
Work on the museum is still in its early stages, even though the original aim was to be ready for Burns' 250th anniversary this year. Completion is scheduled for summer 2010.
In April, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust opened Life, Love and Legacy, an introductory exhibition and audiovisual experience that cost £500,000. The site in Stratford-upon-Avon is extremely popular and is one of five historic buildings associated with Shakespeare that is run by the trust.
The new visitor centre successfully filters the large numbers of visitors into smaller groups, which improves circulation through the small rooms and narrow staircases in the terrace of Elizabethan houses where Shakespeare grew up.
Large numbers of visitors anxious to pay their respects are often at odds with the fragile infrastructure of many birthplace mu-seums. But the public's fascination with where writers, composers and scientists were born shows no signs of waning and these types of museums will continue to have to deal with the crowds.
Corinna Lotz is a freelance journalist
Places of pilgrimage
DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire
The museum is where Lawrence was born in 1885, and is the first of the Lawrence family's four Eastwood homes. Guided tours tell visitors about his family life and the type of home and mining community that shaped his formative years.
Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, Lichfield, Staffordshire
This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, best known for his Dictionary of the English Language. The museum, which is housed in a Grade-I listed building, has been holding a series of events to celebrate.
Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum, Portsmouth
The writer was born in a house in Portsmouth in 1812 and lived there for his first three years. The property is now preserved as a museum furnished in the style of 1809, the year his parents set up home there.
Burns Cottage, Ayr
The poet Robert Burns was born in 1759 in a small cottage in Alloway. The 250th anniversary of his birth has featured a range of celebratory events as part of Scotland's Year of Homecoming. The Burns National Heritage Park, which is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, is being redeveloped to include a new museum, which will house the Burns collection.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Startford-upon-Avon
This is run by an independent charity that owns five houses, all directly linked to Shakespeare, in and around Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust has spent £500,000 on Life, Love and Legacy, an exhibit at Shakespeare's birthplace in Henley Street.
DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire
The museum is where Lawrence was born in 1885, and is the first of the Lawrence family's four Eastwood homes. Guided tours tell visitors about his family life and the type of home and mining community that shaped his formative years.
Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, Lichfield, Staffordshire
This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, best known for his Dictionary of the English Language. The museum, which is housed in a Grade-I listed building, has been holding a series of events to celebrate.
Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum, Portsmouth
The writer was born in a house in Portsmouth in 1812 and lived there for his first three years. The property is now preserved as a museum furnished in the style of 1809, the year his parents set up home there.
Burns Cottage, Ayr
The poet Robert Burns was born in 1759 in a small cottage in Alloway. The 250th anniversary of his birth has featured a range of celebratory events as part of Scotland's Year of Homecoming. The Burns National Heritage Park, which is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, is being redeveloped to include a new museum, which will house the Burns collection.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Startford-upon-Avon
This is run by an independent charity that owns five houses, all directly linked to Shakespeare, in and around Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust has spent £500,000 on Life, Love and Legacy, an exhibit at Shakespeare's birthplace in Henley Street.
