Charlie Eppes

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Charlie Eppes, played by David Krumholtz, is one of two main fictional characters in the television show NUMB3RS.

Charlie is portrayed as a young mathematical genius and professor of applied mathematics at the fictional California Institute of Science, CalSci (primarily based on Caltech, where some filming and mathematics consulting is done). As a world-class mathematician, the character helps his brother Don Eppes solve many of his perplexing FBI cases, sometimes with close friends and colleagues Larry Fleinhardt and Amita Ramanujan who further refine Charlie's approach and help him stay focused, and has consulted for the NSA for nearly five years, having attained the highest level of national security clearance.

And I tend to remember numbers. — "Uncertainty Principle"

According to Charlie's father, he could multiply 4-digit numbers mentally at age 3 and at the age of 4 required special teachers. In the second grade, he attempted to find a 70-digit narcissistic number in base 12 — Charlie has described himself as "quixotic" in elementary school. A prodigy, Charlie attended Princeton University at the age of 13 after graduating from high school at the same time as his older brother, published his first mathematical treatise at the age of 14 (in the American Journal of Mathematics), and graduated at the age of 16. In fact, he was the youngest person to ever write a paper of importance.

It was his paper on the Eppes convergence, which concerned asymptotics of Hermitian random matrices, that made him a star in his field. Following a seminar that heavily criticized this seminal piece many years after its initial publication, Charlie realized that his work with the FBI has prevented him from doing research significant to other mathematicians and now hopes to spend decades on cognitive emergence theory ("the mathematics of the brain") to rectify this certain inequity, which has delighted Larry. Although he was a child prodigy, Charlie now moreover fears the fact that his best years in his research will never come ahead of schedule again.

He is extremely talented in chess, as it requires both his father and brother to play against him and a distraction to defeat him. Charlie also has vast understanding of theoretical physics, often assisting Larry with his multi-dimensional supergravity theory and papers on gravity waves, and biology, extending to knowledge of ciliate protozoa and the spread of infectious diseases. While brilliant in some areas, he is lacking in others. He is apparently a bad speller (e.g., he misspells "anomaly" and "conceited") and does not know the meaning of "defenestration" (for which Larry chastises him stating that the idealization is to be a Renaissance man and that even math and physics majors had to have a course on English). Thus, his father likes playing Scrabble with him.

Charlie has wild furrowed hair, is wary of people and frequently enthralled with objects and patterns. His father has said Charlie is easily fascinated, possesses a big heart and is thorough. But he misses certain things completely. Meanwhile, Larry observed that he is "a talented theoretician with an ego problem" and a student once described him as fast talking and disorganized, and Larry agrees. Fleinhardt also accurately noticed that his colleague has a high standard of guilt and is a pragmatist. Charlie is rather fond of providing excessive explanations (e.g., his discussion of Occam's razor) and reducing complex phenomena to intuitively obvious situations through practical analogies that are quite unlike Larry's metaphysical musings and cosmic metaphors. While contemplating, his antics and mannerisms may even disconcert more conventional thinkers. Wearing his headset, Dr. Eppes has an intense focusing ability as he voraciously writes equations, often covering several chalkboards with a staccato clacking and the aid of a red chalk holder. Nevertheless, if his line of thought is interrupted during a tense moment, as one of restricted foresight, he can become very disgruntled. Further, when deeply concentrating on a particular problem, it seems Charlie is unable to provide insights to other topics for the sake that they are simply needed or wanted — he has to write what is in his head. Like his brother Don, he is characteristically stubborn and obsessive ("one part exuberance, two parts obsession"), especially when it comes to work, but he's rather naïve when it comes to human behavior. The latter often interferes with his FBI work and, thus, is the cause of much distress for him at times.

Quite conversely, Charlie's research often interferes with his relationships: as with Amita on their first date, for all they could talk about is mathematics; Fleinhardt said that it was a common interest and they should not struggle to avoid the subject. Charlie has also spent some time with his ex-girlfriend, Susan Berry (Sonya Walger), an attractive neuroscientist from London. He had lived with Susan for two years, and Larry described this as his very own Berry's phase. However, she later revealed that she is currently involved with someone else and had to return to England. Charlie has attempted to start a relationship with Amita once more, though her job offer at Harvard University had strained this possibility and made him distraught for some time. Recently, she decided to take the alternative offer at CalSci and hopes to begin a romantic relationship with him, though his fear of possible failure caused him to question whether he wanted this second chance; Don cautioned him about such an attitude. Amita noticed his ambivalence and wasn't certain if she wanted to back out of the relationship, but he then pushed it forward.

The episode "Uncertainty Principle" is significant for the backstory it gives on the family relationships, particularly Charlie's difficulty in dealing with his mother's death from cancer. While it's unclear how Don reacted, Charlie spent the last three months of his mother's life isolated in the garage, incessantly working on one of the Millennium Prize Problems, specifically P vs NP; it's a point of contention between the brothers. Also, Charlie doesn't think Don understood what he went through during their school years, especially how he was treated as "Don's brainiac little brother" by his peers in high school. However, Charlie's relationship with Don remains strong, as he has begun to increasingly fear for his brother's safety on the job and still looks to his older brother for acceptance. Charlie and his father worry about Don committing to relationships, and feared that he had been cheating on Robin Brooks. Ironically, Charlie has similar problems with women himself. FBI agent David Sinclair of Don's team has even commented that he has never seen two brothers so similar and yet so different.

In "Prime Suspect," Charlie purchases the beautiful Craftsman family home from his father, who continues to live with him. Now 30 years old, Charlie wants to be responsible and take care of his father but still believes that much of the pressures involving their dad has been put on his shoulders as Don doesn't seem to have enough time. Realizing this, Alan had set his sights on moving out to accomplish things on his own, with Charlie seemingly supporting the idea, but has since chosen to stay as he favors his son's company. Recently, Charlie was bothered by his father trying to impose his will on him with maintaining the house, as he is a full tenured professor at one of the most prestigious institutions in the country working on "life-altering" mathematics, i.e., in solving crimes. Alan just wanted him to be responsible and not end up like Larry, though Mr. Eppes respects Fleinhardt. Even he has thought of this possibility and decided to do more around the home. After Charlie compared his own situation to that of Einstein his father looked into information on the physicist and understood his son's predicament. Charlie also feels guilty about the amount of time his parents, particularly his mother, who always was attuned to his way of thinking, spent with him as a child; he even asks his mother (JoBeth Williams) in a dream if she regrets the time away from Don and Alan because of the special attention he needed growing up.

As of late, unforeseen complications with his work have emerged as the new Chair of the CalSci Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy Division, Dr. Mildred French (Kathy Najimy), in the episode "Waste Not", has made Charlie head of the Ph.D. admissions committee against his wishes, bogging him down with more work, and gave him pressures about using the school's supercomputer for FBI work or missing classes for such. This led to Charlie being confrontational, but she calmed him when she said she just wanted him to be "the Sean Connery of the mathematics department."

When Larry announced his leave of absence to board the International Space Station (in the episode "Brutus"), Charlie was shocked and upset. He was in denial about Larry's ambitions and he thought reason of the risks involved would assert itself firmly in Larry's mind. He reasoned that apparently Larry wouldn't do such a thing. Larry remanded his few prized possessions to him, and he was grateful for the gesture. When he told him his concerns, Larry was angered. Amita said to Larry, "[Charlie] has never dreamt of something he couldn't reach, so he has no idea what it is like to want something he is not able to get. So how could he understand how much [Larry] would give up when this chance comes along?" Larry understood and decided to ignore Charlie's contestations. Though neither apologized, they were on good terms. Charlie said to Amita that he does not know what he would do without him, as he perused through Larry's precious items that were bestowed upon him.

[edit] Notes

• Following his five-year studies on random matrices, Charlie worked on sequences with orthogonal symmetry, and recently has given a seminar on the zeros of random orthogonal polynomials. He has also provided insights for possibly solving the P vs NP problem and published a work on H-infinity Control of Non-Linear Systems, while his current research is in cognitive emergence theory. Charlie has taught courses on calculus, chaos theory, fluid dynamics, and probability at CalSci in addition to giving guest lectures on applied probability. The lecture in which he converted the classroom into a miniature casino for analyzing probabilities is considered an "Eppes Classic". He has given lectures on group theory and Kac–Moody algebras. Also, Charlie has taken over Larry's computational physics class when he was asked to do so, and has given a joint lecture on circular motion and the Coriolis effect with Larry.
• Charlie corrected the loophole at the infinite-dimensional simplex in the Eppes convergence pointed out by rival prodigy and fellow Princeton graduate Dr. Marshall Penfield (Colin Hanks), a set theorist who has worked on representation theory, calling it the Penfield variation.
• It has been implied that he also studied at Stanford University and MIT.
• Charlie is considered a "code-breaking machine" and served, in part, as a cryptanalyst for the NSA.
• Larry has compared Charlie to Évariste Galois, another once-plagued mathematical prodigy. Also, the young fantasy baseball and sabermetrics fanatic Oswald Kittner called him Good Will Hunting.
• According to Charlie's high school yearbook, his favorite person is Galileo. (The picture of Charlie in his high school yearbook is actually a publicity still of David Krumholtz from his role in the movie "10 Things I Hate about You".)
• Charlie likes to play Frisbee golf, video games and basketball. He also enjoys snowboarding, hiking and may be getting the hang of golfing and rock climbing. Fleinhardt has challenged him in air hockey, with his "physics" against Charlie's "geometry."
• Charlie never liked his mother's pancakes, though Don did. He is partial to the garage like his mom (keeping much of his work on blackboards contained therein) and spreading his work out in a manner similar to his father with his blueprints.
• In "Convergence," it is revealed that Charlie has a "substance abuse problem" with lemon meringue pie.
• He feels that fingerprint analyses are non-standardized.
• Charlie didn't have a driver's license in season 1 and usually rode a bicycle, but got a second learner's permit. In the season 2 episode "Harvest," he shows a California driver's license. He is also a little wary about signing up to become an organ donor.
• He cannot balance a checkbook very well.
• Charlie is quite skilled in the art of origami.

[edit] See also

• NUMB3RS