Sally Quinn, the author of a 1991 novel titled Happy Endings, has revealed that the “sexy” scientist character in her book was based on the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Happy Endings became a bestseller during the time that Fauci, now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spearheaded research efforts during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “I just fell in love with him,” Quinn told Washingtonian magazine, referring to her first meeting with Fauci, whom she sat next to at a dinner event in Washington, D.C. “Usually those dinners, you make polite conversation, and that’s it. But we had this intense conversation, personal conversation. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is amazing.’”

In Happy Endings, Quinn’s protagonist Sadie Grey, a former first lady, falls in love with an NIH scientist named Michael Lanzer, who discovered a cure for AIDS. Lanzer’s voice is described as “low, melodious, sexy, almost hypnotic.” At one point in the novel, he tells Grey: “You are like a tumor in my brain which is getting larger and larger each day.”