Howard Wolowitz

Howard Wolowitz, M.Eng.
File:Howard Wolowitz.jpg Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz
First appearance	"Pilot"
Portrayed by	Simon Helberg
In-universe information
Nickname	Wolowizard, Howie, Sir Howard of Wolowitz (online)
Gender	Male
Title	Mr. Howard Wolowitz, M.Eng.
Occupation	Aerospace Engineer
Relatives	Mrs. Wolowitz (mother)
Religion	Jewish
Nationality	American

Howard Wolowitz is a fictional character on the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by actor Simon Helberg.

Among the main male characters in the show, Howard is distinguished for lacking a doctor's degree, for still living with his mother, and for believing himself to be a "ladies' man". He is named after a computer programmer known by the show's co-creator Bill Prady.

Personality

Howard is a Jewish aerospace engineer at Caltech's Department of Applied Physics who often hangs out at Leonard and Sheldon's apartment, and is best friends with Rajesh Koothrappali.

Howard sports a bowl-style haircut and tends to wear loud, vintage, 1960-era outfits, a V-neck or tee shirt over a turtleneck or dicky, and always has skinny pants. He is also fond of unusual belt buckles, which have included a Nintendo controller, a silver Batman logo, a 45 RPM record insert, a Klingon communicator and a buckle containing the superhero the Flash. Like his friends, Howard is a big fan of comic books and superheros.

Beside English, Howard is fluent in 5 languages, these being French, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Persian, and in the fictional Klingon from the Star Trek franchise.

Howard fancies himself a "ladies' man" and he provides outrageous pick-up lines whenever there is a female present.

Howard, much like Penny, dislikes many of Sheldon's antics, but he has grown accustomed to them. One time, Penny asked Howard why he and Raj became friends with Sheldon, he simply replied "We like Leonard".

Howard is allergic to peanuts, and they possess a serious threat to his life. He also mentioned having transient ideopathic arrhythmia.

Howard describes himself as a romantic, although he usually comes across as overtly sexual and, in the words of Penny, disgusting.

Non Kosher

Although Jewish, Howard is not very serious about his faith and does not keep kosher. For instance, he eats pork, and when the price of pork went up he remarked "it's getting harder and harder to be a bad Jew". When Howard got sick after eating shellfish, Raj criticized him for eating something non-kosher and quoted Leviticus 11:3.

In another occasion, when Howard tried to date Sheldon's sister, Missy, he said he would kill his rabbi with a pork chop if his religion was an impediment.

Despite this, Howard has shown some belief in his faith. When he and Raj posed as goths to pick up women, he wore fake-tattoo sleeves on his arms, and refused to get actual tattoos so he could still be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Family

Howard is noted for still living with his overbearing mother, who is oblivious to his accomplishments as a grown-up and usually treats him like he was still a child.

Mrs. Wolowitz is not seen on-screen but her voice is heard when he is at their house or when he talks to her on the phone. She talks to Howard always by yelling at him, which results in awkward long-distance conversations with Howard yelling back at her. She makes Howard's life miserable at home which prompts him to call her a "crazy old lady".

Work

Unlike Leonard, Sheldon, and Raj, Howard does not have a Ph.D., and is sometimes mocked about it, specially by Sheldon. He defends himself by pointing out that he has a master's degree in Engineering from MIT.

Howard is usually seen working on equipment to be used in NASA missions and the International Space Station, though many times he is careless about it.

In the first episode, Howard mentioned working on the design of a satellite that orbits a moon of Jupiter taking high-resolution photos.

Having worked on the Mars rover project, he invited his date, Dr. Stephanie Barnett, to drive it at a secret facility. Instead, the rover became stuck in a Martian ditch and he spent the rest of the night with Sheldon and Raj trying to repair the damage. When this proved unsuccessful, he decided to erase the hard drives of the facility to cover up his doings.

In another occasion, Howard worked on a zero-gravity human-waste disposal system, essentially a "space toilet", that was deployed in the International Space Station. He later realized the equipment had a structural weakness, and again sought the help of his friends to correct it. The solution proved unsuccessful.

Being the engineer among his physicist friends, he assumes the role of leader for small hands-on projects. He was the primary force behind "M.O.N.T.E.", a killer robot designed to enter a robot fighting competition. The robot was destroyed by Barry Kripke's own robot, the "Kripke Krippler", in a unofficial match.

Relationships

Howard is consistently depicted as the most sex-crazed of the guys. When it comes to women, Howard doesn't discriminate and is not very concerned by a woman's age or physical attractiveness, and he is open to try new things.

One time he developed a mathematical formula for the likelihood of him having sex by applying and modifying the Drake equation to include the "Wolowitz coefficient", which he defined as "neediness times dress size squared". He stated, "I'm a horny engineer,... I never joke about sex or math".

Howard's techniques to approach women are varied, including magic and card tricks, ventriloquism, and techniques from the Mystery Method, such as peacocking and negging.

Along with Leonard and Raj, Howard also attempted to date Missy, Sheldon's fraternal twin sister. His offer wasn't accepted.

Since the beginning of the series, Howard shows interest in Penny, but she always turned him down. After yet another approach by Howard, Penny finally confronted him about how he treats women. This greatly affected Howard, and he fell into depression, missing work and staying home. When Penny went to apologize, Howard told her about his past relationships and Penny showed some sympathy for him; after her comforting words, Howard tried to kiss her, but she reacted and punched him in the face. With the situation resolved, Penny believed they had come to an "understanding", but Howard thought he was merely "half-way to pity sex" with her.

Howard engaged in a "friends with benefits" relationship with Leslie Winkle which brought him a few benefits beside sex. However, he still became depressed when Leslie dumped him some time later. In order to cheer him up, Leonard and Raj took Howard to Las Vegas, and managed to hire a prostitute for him.

When the guys travelled by train to a symposium in San Francisco, Howard had a chance to talk to Summer Glau (portraying herself); eventually she got so annoyed by him, that she broke his cell phone.

During a camping trip with Leonard and Raj, in which they all got stoned by eating cookies, Howard revealed he lost his virginity with his second cousin Jeanie, after his uncle's funeral.

Despite the fact that Howard is undeniably obsessed with women, he is accused to being in a homosexual relationship with Raj. This is often pointed out by Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, Leonard's mother. In her words, they are in a "ersatz homosexual marriage".

See also

• Leonard Hofstadter
• Sheldon Cooper
• Penny
• Rajesh Koothrappali
• Leslie Winkle
• List of characters in The Big Bang Theory
• List of The Big Bang Theory episodes