Leonard Leakey Hofstadter,The Big Bang Theory. "The Middle-Earth Paradigm". Season 1, Episode 6. October 29, 2007. Ph.D. is a fictional character portrayed by Johnny Galecki and one of the protagonists in the 2007–2019 CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. Leonard is an experimental physicist who shares an apartment with his colleague and best friend, Sheldon Cooper. For his portrayal, Galecki was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 2011.
Penny is Leonard's next-door neighbor (across the hall) and main love interest, and the teasing of romance between the two of them is a major force driving the series. In season 7, "The Gorilla Dissolution", they get engaged and later married in Las Vegas.
Creation and casting Leonard is named after actor/producer Sheldon Leonard and Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate Robert Hofstadter. The part was originally offered to Macaulay Culkin but he turned it down as he did not like the pitch. John Ross Bowie, who would later be cast as Barry Kripke, also auditioned for the role. Johnny Galecki was originally asked to play the role of Sheldon Cooper but thought he would be "better suited" for the character of Leonard. Leonard is one of four characters to appear in every episode of the series, along with Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz, and Rajesh Koothrappali.
Characterization Personality Originally from New Jersey and a graduate of Princeton University, Leonard works as a Caltech experimental physicist, mainly working with lasers, and shares an apartment with colleague Sheldon Cooper in Pasadena, California. He is usually seen wearing his characteristic black thick-framed glasses and low-cut black Converse All Stars sneakers with pastel hoodies or neutral-colored sweat jackets (i.e. jackets with integrated hoodies) or a combination of the two, brown or red trousers, or (less frequently) jeans and physics-themed T-shirts. At night Leonard wears a white t-shirt, a maroon robe and white socks. His various girlfriends try to change his outfits: Penny has no success, while Stephanie gets him to wear dress shirts and sweaters (which he finds uncomfortable), and Priya gets him to switch briefly to dress shirts, waistcoats and dark slacks; he reverts to his original outfits after she leaves for India, but starts eschewing his hoodies in favor of button-down shirts and non-hooded jackets towards the end of the seventh season, a trend that continues into successive seasons; in the series finale, Leonard admits that the only reason he wears hoodies is because of how low Sheldon insists on setting the thermostat, although by this point Sheldon has not lived with him for the past three years.
Although Leonard feels at home with his geek colleagues, he wants to be more social; of the four main male characters, he has the least difficulty interacting with "non-geek" individuals. He is instantly captivated by Penny, and from the beginning sets out to date her. In early episodes, Leonard is reluctant to let Penny know about his recreational activities (such as Klingon Boggle), as he does not want her to see him as a geek. While certainly a geek by most definitions, he is far less socially inept than Sheldon (who is unable to grasp social norms and is often even dismissive of them), Raj (who is initially unable to talk to women unless he is under the influence of alcohol or anti-anxiety prescription drugs, and even after getting over his handicap still tends to speak inappropriately), and Howard (who is often seen as "creepy" when flirting with women, including Penny).
Leonard is also musically inclined, playing the cello. He claims that his parents made him take cello lessons when he was young. In season 1 episode "The Hamburger Postulate", he and Leslie Winkle have sex, after meeting to practice their instruments, which Leonard calls "a little musical foreplay".
Despite his attempts not to appear to be a geek, Leonard owns Star Wars hygiene products, a prop of the One Ring, Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation officers' uniforms, an expansive Superman comic book collection and a Battlestar Galactica Colonial warrior's flight suit. Early in the series, Leonard tries to get rid of his collectables to impress Penny with his maturity. However, he changes his mind when he sees that Penny is already dating another man.
Because he has lived with Sheldon for several years, Leonard knows him better than his other colleagues: this has led Sheldon to believe that Leonard is his best friend. Nevertheless, Leonard often finds himself explaining Sheldon's behavior or serving as a mediator between him and other people. For instance, when Penny and Sheldon engage in a fierce dispute, Leonard gives her Sheldon's mother's phone number so she will call her son and scold him for his behavior, thus ending the fight. "The Staircase Implementation" features a flashback to when Leonard first moved in with Sheldon. Leonard explains to Penny that he moved in despite the difficulty of living with Sheldon because the rent was so reasonable. Shortly after moving in, during a rocketry experiment that Leonard, Raj and Howard conducted, Sheldon observed miscalculations Leonard made in mixing the rocket fuel and subsequently saved Leonard's life by pulling him out of the building's elevator just before the fuel capsule exploded. This explains why the elevator is out of order for the duration of the series. Leonard says that Sheldon, despite his tendency to alienate others, kept quiet about Leonard's destruction of the elevator – "He didn't rat me out to the landlord, or the police.... or Homeland Security."
Despite Leonard's reasonable and friendly personality, he occasionally demonstrates a mean streak. This includes deliberately triggering Sheldon's obsessive compulsive problems, mocking Howard and Raj whenever they slip up, and making sniping comments when Penny's commitment issues flare up. He is also prone to jealousy, often feeling insecure and defensive whenever Penny interacts with other men, and on one occasion trying to frighten off a British college student she is doing a project with, because Penny comments positively on his accent. This incident ironically leads to Penny finally, if inadvertently, declaring her love for Leonard.
Leonard's primary health concern is his lactose intolerance – consuming dairy products results in flatulence. Leonard wears eyeglasses because of myopia and cannot see clearly without them. In one episode, when his glasses are broken at the movie theater, he has to surreptitiously return to his apartment and retrieve his backup glasses. In order to avoid detection by a sick Sheldon and Penny, who is nursing him, Howard and Raj help him to navigate through the living room by using a helmet camera. Leonard also states in one episode that he has sleep apnea. He also has asthma, and in multiple episodes needs his inhaler in order to perform a variety of activities including sports and sex. During his relationship with Leslie Winkle, he tells her that many members of his family have died from heart disease and thus he has a genetic disposition to the condition.
Family All of the members of Leonard's family are accomplished scientists, except for his younger brother Michael, who is a tenured law professor at Harvard University.
Leonard's mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She has a personality almost identical to Sheldon's, including strict speech patterns, lack of social conventions, and attention to detail, and she is principally responsible for Leonard's difficult childhood. Sheldon and Beverly have a friendly relationship where they share details of each other's lives, with Sheldon often failing to pass on significant information to Leonard such as Leonard's parents divorcing and the family dog Mitsy's death. Leonard is upset with the fact that she tells Sheldon more than she tells him, but later decides it's okay. After a night out bonding and drinking with Penny in which she notices an attractive busboy, Beverly kisses Sheldon but realizes she "would rather have the busboy".
Due to his mother's views, Leonard never celebrated his birthday or Christmas when he was a child, and when she visits him she is not impressed with his unoriginal research. Leonard reveals to Penny that he built a "hugging machine" when he was young in order to compensate for the lack of affection from his mother. He further states that his father used to borrow it. Beverly also belittles Leonard by pointing out that his brother and sister are more successful in their respective fields than he is. Leonard's brother, Michael, is a Harvard law professor and is engaged to the youngest appellate court judge in New Jersey history (who later goes to work with a Habitat for Humanity-esque organisation), and his older sister, whose name is unknown, is a cutting-edge medical researcher working with gibbons to cure diabetes. However, Beverly admits in season 11 that Leonard married the best out of his siblings, after she develops a genuine friendship with Penny. Leonard also dislikes his memories of Christmas, not just because he never celebrated it, but also because instead of gifts the Hofstadter kids had to turn in papers to "Santa" which were graded the next day. Over the course of six years, he never got above a "C minus", which according to Sheldon was a true gift, because by Sheldon's estimation he never deserved anything better. After the episode "The Peanut Reaction", Leonard begins celebrating his birthday after Penny throws him a birthday party upon hearing that he had never had one; he asks Brent Spiner to come to his birthday party at the end of "The Russian Rocket Reaction". As for Christmas, Leonard comes to love it as an adult, unlike Sheldon. Leonard had two childhood pets, a cat named Dr. Boots Hofstadter and a dog named Mitsy. Near the end of season 12, in "The Maternal Conclusion", Leonard's mother seems to be more supportive of her son's new job as co-lead of the University's Photon entanglement project, even spending time with Leonard as he shows her around his new laboratory. However, she reveals that she is doing research for her new book that highlights her parenting technique, directly resulting in the success of her children. This deeply upsets Leonard and Penny who thought that Beverly was making a genuine effort to better their mother-son relationship. Leonard finally confronts his mother, telling her of the many ways she has hurt him. After calming down, Leonard tearfully forgives his mother and himself for the emotional toll he has carried for most of his life. Beverly thanks her son for forgiving her and hugs him.
Leonard's father, Dr. Alfred Hofstadter is an anthropologist. Sheldon reveals that Leonard's middle name, "Leakey", comes from famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, with whom Leonard's father had worked. Leonard is embarrassed by his middle name and its humorous connotations, and rarely mentions it. Apparently, his father was not very affectionate towards him either; he mentions that he had to compete with the bones of an Etruscan boy for his father's attention, but this was likely because his father was away from home a lot for work and was not able to get to know his children well. However, they seem to have developed a good, affectionate rapport by the time of Leonard and Penny's impending second wedding ceremony in the season 9 finale.
When lamenting the possibility that the Hofstadter name would die out with him after Penny expresses a desire not to have children, Sheldon points out that not only does his brother Michael have children but that his sister has five sons who bore the surname Hofstadter.