Leslie Winkle

Leslie Winkle, PhD
File:Leslie Winkle.jpg Dr. Leslie Winkle with Sheldon Cooper (left)
First appearance	"The Fuzzy Boots Corollary"
Portrayed by	Sara Gilbert
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Title	Leslie Winkle, PhD
Occupation	Experimental physicist
Nationality	American

Leslie Winkle is a fictional character on the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by actress Sara Gilbert. She is another physicist who works in the same lab as Leonard Hofstadter.

Leslie Winkle, initially a recurrent character, was promoted to main cast during the second season, but demoted again once the writers realized they could not produce quality material for her for every episode.

Personality

Leslie Winkle is essentially Leonard's female counterpart equipped with the black framed glasses and sweat jackets; even Penny says they make a cute couple.

Leslie does not get on well with Sheldon Cooper and she frequently mocks him, calling him "dumbass" or variations of it, such as "Dr. Dumbass". In response, Sheldon usually tries to insult her back, but without much success.

Work

Leslie specializes in high energy physics, particularly supersymmetry and dilepton calculations.

Sheldon has made fun of her research many times, urging her to quit and instead dedicate to home shores and child-bearing. However, in one occasion she was able to fix one of Sheldon's equations, which greatly irritated him.

In the early episodes, Leslie is depicted in the lab using the equipment to prepare food. In one instance she investigated the time it taked to heat a cup of Ramen noodles with lasers; in another occasion she froze a banana with liquid nitrogen and then shattered it with a hammer to put it in her cereal.

Leslie participated alongside Leonard, Howard, and Raj in the Physics Bowl; their team, PMS (Perpetual Motion Squad), defeated Sheldon's AA (Army Ants).

Relationships

At the beginning of the series, after Leonard realized that Penny was out of his league, he turned his attention to Leslie. Before anything happened between them, Leslie proposed they kissed to see if they had any chemistry at all. Though Leslie complimented Leonard on his kissing technique, she felt no arousal, and thus, no date occurred.

In another occasion, after a string quartet practice, in which Leslie played the violin, she offered herself to Leonard, and the two engaged in sexual intercourse. Later, Leslie made it clear she only used him to satisfy her sex drive under a time of stress, and subsequently dumped him.

After yet another failed attempt to date Penny, Leonard sought Leslie again. This time Leslie decided to take things more seriously; she committed to "the traditional relationship paradigm", and actively proposed that Leonard assumed the "male role". Leslie went as far as planning the number of kids they would procreate. The relationship ended when Leslie and Sheldon engaged in a dispute, and Leonard didn't want to take a side supporting Leslie's belief in loop quantum gravity against Sheldon's belief in string theory.

Later, during a paintball game, Leslie began an affair with Howard, and they subsequently slept together. Despite budget reductions, Leslie gave Howard access to experimental equipment, and invited him to a trip to Geneva to see CERN's supercollider. Howard realized he was being used by Leslie as a "glorified sex toy", but he didn't have a problem with that. Although they only had a "friends with benefits" relationship, Howard still became depressed when Leslie dumped him some time later.