Beverly Hofstadter

Beverly Hofstadter, M.D, Ph.D., is the mother of Michael and Leonard Hofstadter, as well as an unnamed daughter. Beverly is a neuroscientist as well as an award-winning psychiatrist and author.

Season 2
Beverly first appears in "The Maternal Capacitance," visiting her son. Leonard is clearly uneasy about it, and it becomes apparent when she arrives why: she is as strict and logical as Sheldon, if not more. She instantly upsets Penny by talking with her about her childhood issues with her father, refers to Howard and Raj as an "ersatz homosexual couple," and repeatedly belittles Leonard. She, however, gets along perfectly with Sheldon, and spends more time with him. At the end, they sing "Any Way You Want It" together, as a confused Leonard looks on.

Season 3
She reappears in "The Maternal Congruence," where she visits Leonard for Christmas. She does not know that by this point, Leonard and Penny are dating, as Leonard had not told her for fear of how she would disapprove because of Penny's lack of an education. It turns out that Beverly stays in touch with Sheldon, even telling him more than she does Leonard. Things only become worse when Leonard is told about his parents' pending divorce, his mother's surgery, and the death of his dog with Sheldon having known for weeks. Fed up with his mother's lack of compassion, Leonard leaves. Penny takes Beverly drinking to get her loosened up, and they bond. Penny reveals her relationship with Leonard, and Beverly is confused on why he did not tell her (even though she neglects to tell him anything). When they get back to the apartment, she gives Leonard a genuine hug after she realizes why he distances himself. She then kisses Sheldon passionately, but rejects him for a busboy she saw at the Cheesecake Factory, confirming there is no romantic tension between the two (as Sheldon was not happy about it)> Being driven to the airport by Leonard, she gives her blessing to his relationship.

Season 5
She appears via Skype in the premiere episode, "The Skank Reflex Analysis." Leonard tells her his recent frustrations with his current girlfriend Priya and his anger towards Penny. She only responds "Buck up, sissy pants," showing she has not changed much.

Personality
Her personality is rather cold and, perhaps, influenced in part by her professional life, overly analytical. She tends to diagnose the behavior of neuroses of those she's speaking to. Her matter-of-fact analysis of Penny's relationship with her father prompts Penny to burst into tears. Rather than attempt to console Penny, Beverly merely continued to psychoanalyze her.

She diagnosed Raj with selective mutism and considered Raj and Howard's relationship to be an "ersatz homosexual marriage," often to their considerable discomfort. For example, her primary interest is making accomplishments in her fields. At times, she seems to see other humans as merely test subjects and will ask those she finds particularly interesting if they would be willing to have their brain scanned. While Leonard does not feel that his mother truly appreciates him, she takes a liking to Sheldon; whom she also tells more about what's happening to her than her own son (like in Season 3, after picking Beverly up from the airport, Sheldon asks if she liked the flowers he sent her after her carpal tunnel surgery which Leonard didn't even hear about).

Family and Relationships
As a by-product of her personality, Beverly's relationships with others tend to be non-traditional in nature.

Leonard Hofstadter
Beverly's relationship with her son is decidedly unmaternal. She frequently critiques various aspects of his life utterly oblivious to the fact that she might be hurting his feelings, although she is perfectly aware of his childhood issues with her. Once as a child, Beverly made Leonard return an award at the ceremony because of its similarity to an earlier project of Michael. Beverly mentioned at one point that Leonard's brother and sister are more successful than he is. Leonard's childhood with her can best be described as a series of neurological experiments. At one point Leonard indicates that he created a "hugging machine" in order to feel some sort of warmth and companionship. Leonard was not even told that his brother was getting engaged, when his dog was put to sleep or when his favorite Uncle Floyd died. It is likely that she may have been more interested with Leonard as a test subject rather than her own child. Beverly made a brief appearance in "The Skank Reflex Analysis" via Sheldon's laptop to comfort Leonard and listened to his problems and simply told him to "buck up," then signed off. In return, Leonard is spiteful towards Beverly and blames a majority of his childhood issues on her. As a result of this upbringing, Leonard is desperate to impress women.

Leonard's Siblings
Beverly noted at one point that her other children (Leonard's younger brother, Michael and his, probably older, sister) are far more successful than Leonard both professionally and personally. However, there is no indication that she feels any differently toward them on an emotional level, so she is just the same with them as she is with Leonard and wasn't proud of them, even though they both have successful careers. For example, when Howard asked her if she was proud of them because of their success, she said, "Why? They're not my accomplishments." And when Leonard remarks that she must be happy about her Michael's engagement to a successful young judge, Beverly replies "Why? I'm not marrying her."

Leonard's Father
We learn in the "The Maternal Congruence" that Beverly is divorcing Leonard's father as he had an affair with a waitress from the Princeton university cafeteria. This is one of the few times we see anything resembling emotion from her as she indicates she "did feel something akin to grief and perhaps anger" and further characterized Mr. Hofstadter as a "loathsome son of a bitch". We also learn that they did not have a close romantic relationship with Beverly explaining that she had been responsible for her own orgasms since 1982 and only had intercourse for the purposes of reproduction (perhaps a root cause for Mr. Hofstadter's affair). He himself, also used to borrow Leonard's hugging machine to compensate for the lack of love too.

Sheldon Cooper
Between her neurotically strict speech patterns, lack of social conventions, and attention to detail, she is basically Sheldon's female equivalent, aside from Amy Farrah Fowler (although in many ways she surpasses him, as Sheldon can and does, admittedly rarely, show affection to others, while she never has). Sheldon did keep in touch by Skype, much to the confusion of Leonard. Indeed, her inability to understand social conventions seems if anything to be somewhat more extreme and has to have some social concepts explained to her by, of all people, Sheldon (though his explanations typically reflect his own, at best, incomplete understanding). It is therefore unsurprising that Sheldon and Beverly share an odd non-romantic attraction to each other. They have a mutual interest in having their brain scanned and have even sang a duet of the Journey song "Any Way You Want It". However, she did once kiss him passionately while intoxicated (declaring afterwards that she'd "rather have the busboy"). She apologized the following morning, and Sheldon accepted as she was intoxicated (he blamed Penny).

Trivia

 * Beverly has published multiple books, one such being called: Needy baby, Greedy baby, which Leonard thinks is strongly untrue.
 * Whenever having orgasms she says "yikes".
 * Both Leonard and Sheldon's mothers are fit for the other. Beverly for Sheldon and Mary for Leonard. Leonard is jealous of Sheldon's childhood and Sheldon is jealous of Leonard's childhood.
 * Her last appearance was on a Skype screen since the actress appears in another series based in New York.
 * It was planned that she would meet Mary Cooper which would have caused mother envy between the two in Season 6 but that story line was dropped.
 * Penny ends up in tears when talking to her about her childhood, but she seems to cozy up to her during her next visit when they go out drinking together.