Howard Wolowitz

Howard Joel Wolowitz, M.Eng, is a Jewish engineer who lives with his mother and is the best friend of Rajesh Koothrappali. He often hangs out at Leonard and Sheldon's apartment. He has a Master's degree in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but is usually ridiculed for lacking a doctorate, as opposed to his more distinguished friends. Believing himself to be a ladies' man, Howard is rather confident to try to woo girls (unlike the other three), mostly through disgusting overtures and sometimes with his knowledge of languages, of which he knows six. Most of the languages were revealed in only the matter of one episode; in revealed order, they are English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi. Wolowitz also speaks Klingon (and plays Klingon Boggle) as well as some Elvish, the fictional language created by J. R. R. Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings. He is asthmatic, allergic to peanuts, and has transient idiopathic arrhythmia. Howard sports a bowl-style haircut and wears loud, vintage, 1960-era outfits, a V-neck or tee shirt over a turtleneck or dickey with a variety of pins, and always has skinny pants with unusual belt buckles. His preferred mode of transportation is his Vespa motor scooter. As of The Herb Garden Germination, he is engaged to Bernadette. He is portrayed by Simon Helberg.

Work
Wolowitz is an Aerospace Engineer and faculty at Caltech's Department of Applied Physics. He designed a satellite which is currently orbiting a moon of Jupiter taking high-res photos and remotely repairs satellites on a regular basis. He also troubleshoots space shuttle payloads, while some of the components he built are on the International Space Station, including a small payload support structure for a European science experimental package and the Wolowitz Programmable Hand designed for extravehicular repairs. NASA selected his team's design for a deep field space telescope that will be installed on the ISS, granting him the opportunity to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket (set to launch from Kazakhstan in spring 2012) to observe its deployment on the space station as a payload specialist. He even performed a front end alignment from 62 million miles away when a Mars rover started pulling to the left and managed to get a Mars rover stuck in a ditch, only to have the data which it sent back from the crevice contain the first clear indications that there may have been life on Mars.

However, as co-designer of the Pishkin-Wolowitz Liquid Waste Disposal System and designer of the (albeit flawed) Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Disposal System for the International Space Station, he doesn't get much respect. Further, Howard is not credited for creating a stabilizing telescope camera mounting bracket for Raj and failed to make the team for the new Defense Department laser-equipped surveillance satellite since he was denied the requisite security clearance.

Hobbies
A model rocket enthusiast, he designed the engine himself for a three-stage rocket. His advancements in robotics include the Mobile Omnidirectional Neutralization and Termination Eradicator (MONTE) for the Southern California Robot Fighting League Round Robin Invitational.

Family
Howard is noted for living with his overbearing Jewish mother, who always makes his life miserable at home, and apparently is oblivious to his accomplishments as a grown-up and usually treats him like he is still a child, filling the cliche of a Jewish mother, often prompting Howard to call his mother a "crazy old lady". Despite this, Howard seems to appreciate his Mother's cooking, especially her brisket, a dish what Howard refers throughout (unlike the turbriskefilte, a turkey stuffed with a brisket stuffed with gefilte fish, which he says he 'doesn't even chew' but 'swallows like pills'.). In "The Precious Fragmentation", Howard reveals that his father left the family when Howard was eleven years old. To help Howard overcome this, his mom bought him an Alf doll to console Howard. Although it is not stated what really happened, Howard assumes that his father did not like him.

Relationship
Main Article: Howard and Bernadette 

Bernadette
Howard's relationship with Bernadette is easily his most significant romantic relationship. Howard was introduced to Bernadette by Penny after he initiated the a pact with Leonard in The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. In The Herb Garden Germination, Howard proposed to Bernadette and she accepts.

Trivia

 * Howard thinks that when Penny rejects him that she is actually flirting with him.
 * He is the only one of the group, other than Penny, to lack a Ph.D. He is sometimes mocked by Sheldon and others for this.
 * According to Caltech benefactor Mrs. Latham, he "couldn't stick with it long enough to get his Ph.D." and is simply a "space plumber".
 * Howard has a different chest hair count in "The Cushion Saturation" and "The 21-Second Excitation".
 * He invented what he calls the Wolowitz Coefficient - neediness times dress size squared - as a factor in a modified form of the Drake equation, which estimates the odds of making contact with extraterrestrials by calculating the product of an increasingly restrictive series of fractional values, to calculate the chances of him and his friends having sex with single women in Los Angeles. Crunching the numbers, he came up with a conservative 5,812 potential sex partners within a 40-mile radius.
 * Howard wears alien pins on his collar in every episode.
 * Even though Howard is Jewish, like Raj, Wolowitz does not seem to take his faith seriously and hardly keeps Kosher.
 * Howard wears Vans and Converse.
 * Wolowitz is a huge fan of Stephen Hawking and likes to watch tapes of his lectures, preferably ones prior to 1985, " before he became a 'creepy' computer voice" (Hawking lost his voice due to a tracheotomy performed after a life-threatening bout of pneumonia and now communicates using a voice synthesizer).
 * Wolowitz may not be as competent a polyglot as he believes. In The Dumpling Paradox, a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, referred to Wolowitz as "...your annoying little friend who thinks he speaks Mandarin." As evidence, he addressed Penny in Mandarin saying ("洗个痛快澡"! - Have a Good Shower!") spoken in the wrong tones. Another time, where he addressed to Penny in Russian, he said ("Ты очень красивая девушка" — "You are a very beautiful girl"), but had a bad pronunciation. However, he speaks his French in the appropriate manner without any speaking errors. It has been shown in a preview for The Wiggly Finger Catalyst that he also knows at least some sign language.
 * Wolowitz spends a large amount of time playing MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, where he plays a night elf hunter named Wolowizard with a pet tiger named Buttons. And Age of Conan where he is a Guardian named Sir Howard of Wolowitz.
 * Howard enjoys (and is very decent at) DDR.
 * Howard is allergic to peanuts and when he does eat one, his face goes pink and swells up very badly.
 * Howard owns an Alienware computer.
 * Howard has a Dell XPS M1210 with a 6 Cell Battery.
 * Howard owns a Motorola V3, Nokia N95 and various iPhone cellphones.
 * Howard's personal wardrobe and grooming styles are based on Davy Jones from The Monkees, usually including a 1960s hip bowl-style haircut (even though he chose to have a '70s disco style afro and goat beard 7 years ago) and a brightly colored shirt.
 * Howard can beatbox, albeit badly.
 * The character is named after show producer Bill Prady's former business partner in a software development company, Howard Wolowitz.
 * Howard's mother, played by Carol Ann Susi, threatened to take Howard out of the will as long as "the whore of Omaha", was around, Penny's friend Christy.
 * Howard lives with his mother, though he maintains that his mother lives with him.
 * Howard gets around Pasadena by means of gas-powered scooter with a basket on the front although he may have gotten a car because in the Robotic manipulation he states that he smuggled the robotic arm to his car.
 * Howard sports a number of belt buckles, including a chimpanzee, deli sandwich, a film projector, Nintendo controller and the 'Superman Returns' shield. Many of his belt buckles are purchased from thealley.com
 * Howard has transient idiopathic arrhythmia, which causes him to have an irregular heartbeat.
 * Howard sang "Baby Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" in the car on the way to a "great little sushi place that has karaoke."
 * Howard does not seem loyal to his Jewish faith, as it is revealed that he is only eating kosher at High Holy days; although he did say he wouldn't get a real tattoo so he could be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
 * Howard is at least part inventor in the defective "Zero Gravity Waste Disposal System" on the ISS and uses his mother's meatloaf to test it.
 * Howard plays the drums on Rock Band.
 * Howard lost his virginity to his second cousin Jeannie in a Toyota Corolla, shortly after his uncle Murray's funeral ended. They apparently locked eyes over the pickled herring and ever since Howard gets aroused and ashamed when looking at pickled herring.
 * We have never seen Howard's mother so far, but have heard her a great deal.
 * Howard once went to medical school, but dropped out because he easily gets nauseated when he sees injuries (as seen in The White Asparagus Triangulation when he appears sick when he sees stitches on Leonard's hand).
 * Howard says in "The Friendship Algorithm" that he's thinking about growing a mustache but it's not until The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation he appears with one, having grown a massive beard at the North Pole and keeping the mustache when they shave their beards off.
 * According to "The Apology Insufficiency", his middle name is Joel.
 * Howard has 3% body fat (Raj says he looks like "a human chicken wing" when he's at the beach).
 * In "The Alien Parasite Hypothesis", Howard mentions having taken a karate lesson when he was 11. He claims that he could have become more proficient if his mother could have arranged a carpool.
 * Howard is no longer a ladies man as he now has a girlfriend and recently made fiance, Bernadette.
 * Like a common nerd, Howard was bullied as a child. He received the common treatment of wedgies and swirlies.
 * He weighs either 97 or 108 pounds.
 * Howard's online username/persona/identity is Wolowizard.
 * His nightmare is to shower after the game and to other guys see him naked.

Phrases Howard has used to hit on women, mainly Penny:
 * "See a Penny, pick her up, and all the day you'll have good luck."
 * (Howard was dressed as Robin Hood on Halloween but everyone thought he was Peter Pan:) "I got a lot of fairy dust with your name on it."
 * (Trying to hit on Summer Glau, an actress in Firefly as well as The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Raj later stole this line to use himself) "It's hot in here; it must be Summer."
 * "Are you from Mars? Because your ass is out of this world."
 * "Your ass must be jelly, because jam doesn't shake like that."
 * "If that's a working stethoscope, then maybe you'd like to hear my heart skip a beat."
 * He has also called Penny a "cheesecake-scented goddess".