Larry Fleinhardt

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Professor Lawrence Fleinhardt, as played by Peter MacNicol.

Larry Fleinhardt is a fictional character in the television show NUMB3RS, played by Peter MacNicol.

He is a professor at CalSci (a university based on Caltech and located in Los Angeles in the NUMB3RS universe) and best friend and colleague of Charlie Eppes. He is portrayed as a brilliant theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who researches string theory, 11-dimensional supergravity theory, double-special relativity, black holes, and gravitational waves, using LIGO to check predictions on quantum corrections. He may have even found a way to express Calabi-Yau manifolds in a way that goes beyond a non-vanishing harmonic spinor and, independent of Charlie, (in the episode The Mole) published a work of genius entitled Zero Point Energy and Quantum Cosmology which could provide insight into the cosmological constant problem. According to his backstory, Dr. Fleinhardt has been teaching for 20 years, and Charlie attended his classes at Princeton University, first taking his quantum physics class at the age of 13. (Charlie's father, Alan Eppes, said that all the family heard about that first year was Professor Fleinhardt.) Larry constantly challenges Charlie to employ a broader point of view to his work with the FBI and often assists him with this work, as when his cosmic listening project helped him with his signal analysis. However, Professor Fleinhardt frequently expresses his wish that Eppes would continue with academia rather than consult with the FBI. Along with Alan, Fleinhardt provides words of wisdom to Charlie, reminding him that human behavior is unpredictable. He even comforts Don Eppes (Charlie's brother and FBI contact) about his love life with his perspective on quantum entanglement, yet Charlie has accused him of "mixing cosmic metaphors" after he inadvertently referred to his relationship with Amita Ramanujan as a black hole.

In the episode "Dirty Bomb," Don asks Larry about a radioactive cesium ion (pictured above). He and Charlie explain the dangers of the ionizing radiation it emits.

He is quite awkward in social situations; his students have described him as "boring and intellectually inaccessible." Some of his irregular views have made Charlie wonder "What kind of crazy Kool-Aid do they make you drink before you join the physics department?" When Larry suggested a neural imbalance may be the cause of his lack of dreaming in Hot Shot, Charlie thought the notion would explain a lot about his friend. Usually, Larry seems relaxed, but at times he can be a bit neurotic, or "Fleinhardt." An absent-minded professor, he has forgotten whether he was entering or leaving the CalSci library. The "Doc" even had his own Eureka moment in All's Fair, wherein he applied fluid mechanics to the analysis of footprint slabs he submerged in a jacuzzi only to determine, from the relative displacement of water by each indentation, that the suspect to a murder had a short right leg — a discovery that discounted a particular individual from guilt — and ran to the streets dripping wet in a robe, screaming that it was Archimedes all over again, only to forget where he put his clothes the next minute. Larry is disorganized like Charlie and claims that there is symmetry to his chaos. On a similar note, his antics have led him to eat purely white food at times to maintain supersymmetry, a focus in his research. Apparently, as mentioned in Backscatter, Fleinhardt is awful when it comes to geography — he called to ask if the string theory convention he was already at was in St. Louis or Cleveland, when it was actually in Minneapolis.

Fleinhardt had an addiction with card counting in his youth, which he feels ashamed about and has compared his discomfort during field research at a casino as being at the event horizon of a black hole; this was discussed in Double Down, an episode that focused on a gambling ring. The character evinces a distaste for number theory, but enjoys hiking, and had begun to wonder about his life choices, missed (romantic) opportunities, and the impact of children (or wormholes in Larry's view) on people's lives. Larry has noted how demanding physics can be on his social life (that is nigh-nonexistent as a result of his work) and, along with Charlie, understands Einstein's feelings that one can either do physics or have a family, but not both. Meanwhile, he has realized his affections for Megan, and describes to his confused friends, the Eppes family, that they are closer to understanding the mystery of gamma ray bursts than his feelings in this matter. When he found out she was kidnapped in Two Daughters, Larry's emotions overcame him. Megan claims to like him for his unpredictability. Charlie has not seen such an emotional uncertainty with Larry as when he speaks of her and, as Larry has commented himself, his previously unstructured relationship with Megan made baryogenesis look neat. He has recently commented that his relationship with Megan has made him less concentrated on his work. The only thing he remembers of his mother is her warm smile and tweezed eyebrows. He rarely has spoken of his father, a painter who wished his son had seen the world the way he did and was disappointed by his son's path; Fleinhardt expressed his sorrow with a memory he does not gladly inhabit, stating it is a father's folly to impose their will on their son. Consequently, Larry has an exhaustive knowledge of art and attempted a career as a painter but failed as he was required by his father to study the great works of the masters before he could create an original work.

Larry frequently wears casual patterned shirts and drove a 1944 Volvo until he acquired a 1931 black Model A Ford that he cherishes. Fleinhardt owned a personally restored 1877 Victorian home which he sold in Bones of Contention, and had for some time since been living as somewhat of a vagabond, finding shelter in his office, his car, hotels, and friends' places and often sleeping on couches or in CalSci's steam tunnels. Larry claimed he didn't want to inconvenience Charlie and thought that sharing one bathroom would be problematic, and further did not want to move in with Megan and ruin something "before it even began." He also claimed to believe it allowed him to focus on the sublime rather than the mundane, as well as gravity. Alan had commented on his state during one of their chess games, providing the same advice he has dispensed to all geniuses he knows: "Don't be an idiot." Contrarily, Megan found his situation oddly attractive. However, he "rethought the pursuit of a purely intellectual endeavor." Wanting less complexity and more structure in his life as well as time to be with Megan, Larry stated that he had decided to buy a condo. However, life has never been simple for Larry, and Alan has said that simplicity may be impossible for him so he must deal with structured complexity.

In the episode Brutus, it was revealed that Larry's divestment of his personal property was in anticipation of being selected as a payload specialist on the International Space Station. His work on the cosmic microwave background had some relevance to the NSA's satellite signals technology and he was contacted by this agency last September to serve as an alternate for the recently detained Professor Johannes Igby, a rival physicist who created the now proven (though initially contested by Larry) Igby's Law to redefine the gravitational flux motivated by sound wave propagation in Bose-Einstein condensates and a candidate on the short list for the National Medal of Science award. Larry was distressed when he first heard of Igby's success in his Quarterly Review of Cosmology magazine, but soon recognized, to his own excitement in a seemingly conflicting manner, that he was his replacement for the space mission, causing Charlie to believe he was in shock. Megan seems to be the only one who had some idea of this situation that explains his unorthodox living style and prior mystifying absences (to go to Houston), though his friends had thought that these elements were just part of Larry's quirks. Charlie is in disbelief over the matter and is set distraught at the temporary loss of his friend, even worrying about Larry's safety as he boards the next shuttle to the ISS for a six-month stay; even Larry is mindful of the risk involved in sitting atop 2 million liters of combusted liquid hydrogen and oxygen. He remanded his few prized possessions, including a miniature model of his classic car, a stash of jazz recordings, a Newton-Lacey Award he received long ago, a Science Journal International diploma, and an old t-shirt he wore on the first day he posited causal solutions to ulra-hyperbolic wave equations and, more memorably, when he vanquished Professor Muskrave at the CalSci Texas Hold'em Tournament, to his closest friend, Charlie. The reason he provides for not informing his friends of the big news is that he considered it a longshot and said it is only with the good fortune that Igbby's new responsibilities have prevented him from procuring his place on the shuttle that Larry may realize his dream of space exploration. On the other hand, Larry stated he will miss Megan and she responded in kind by being supportive and intensifying their relationship before his departure.

[edit] Notes

Years ago Larry taught a quantum physics class, wherein Larry first met Charlie. Recently, Larry has taught a computational physics course and, with Charlie, has given a joint lecture on circular motion and the Coriolis effect.
Like Charlie, Larry is a genius and possibly the most advanced intellect in L.A. as Alan has remarked.
He graduated from college at the age of 19.
Larry hopes to win a Nobel Prize for his multi-dimensional supergravity theory.
In "The Mole," after Larry published his paper on quantum cosmology in Physics Weekly (an academic journal) without Charlie as a collaborator, Fleinhardt and Eppes realized that they work best together, and Larry compared them to Simon & Garfunkel.
He has known expressions to take on a shimmering quality.
Larry knew Richard Feynman. His character is like Feynman who is noted for being both a genius and an enigmatic character. Like Feynman, he percusses, but never for pleasure — he drums away problems.
Fleinhardt doesn't have a cell phone, considering them to be "electronic leashes," and his number is not listed.
As a child, Larry saw a merry-go-round crush a man and now has a fear of horses.
Both he and Charlie are members of the North American Sundial Society, and they have worked together on various contests for the physics department, including a paper airplane contest.
Larry is set to go on the next shuttle to the ISS. This could be because of MacNicol's involvement in filming 24 and will not be able to juggle the two shows.