Pauling was always extremely competitive: Alex Rich, Jack Dunitz, and Horace Freeland Judson all confirmed this fact in conversations with the author.

he and Corey sent a short note: Pauling and Corey 1950.

that contained a detailed explanation: Pauling, Corey, and Branson 1951. Somewhat sadly, Branson wrote a letter in 1984 to Pauling’s biographers Ted and Ben Goertzel, alleging that it was he, and not Pauling, who had “found two spiral structures which fit all the data.” In 1995 he added that Corey had nothing to do with the discovery (Goertzel and Goertzel 1995, pp. 95–98). These allegations are inconsistent with the recollections of a number of other scientists, who remembered Pauling’s models from Oxford, and also inconsistent with the fact that Branson had agreed to be third author on the paper. Branson himself did note that Pauling was “one of the impressive scientific intellects of our age who deserves the Nobel Prizes.”

that he thought that the word “spiral”: Dunitz, in a conversation with the author on November 23, 2010.

“I was thunderstruck by Pauling”: Perutz 1987.