Howard Wolowitz

Howard Joel Wolowitz, M.Eng., is a Jewish aerospace engineer and ex- as well as the one and only main supporting protagonist of the show. He is the son of an overbearing mother, Debbie Wolowitz, who couldn't care less about his scientific accomplishments and still talks to him as if he were a child. As the best friend of Rajesh Koothrappali, Howard often hangs out at Leonard and Sheldon's apartment with him. Although he's the only member of the group lacking a, he defends himself by pointing out that he not only has a Master's degree in Engineering from MIT, but also designs important devices like the "space toilet" used at the International Space Station. Fancying himself a smooth ladies' man, Howard is rather confident in trying to woo girls (unlike the other three), mostly through creepy overtures and sometimes with his knowledge of foreign languages, of which he knows seven (if you count Klingon). During the show he dates and eventually marries Bernadette, with whom he bonded over their hatred towards their overbearing mothers and has been influenced to tone down his creepy behavior.

Early life (Before the show)
Howard was born in Pasadena sometime between March 1 and September 30, 1981 to Sam and Debbie Wolowitz. When Howard was in kindergarten, his mother made him wear rubber gloves there so he wouldn't pick up a disease from the other children. When Howard was 11, his father left for an unknown reason and Howard spent his adolescence looking out of the window waiting for him to return one day, but he never did. Howard's childhood was lonely and he was bullied back then with wedgies and swirlies, one of his bullies being Scott Kapinski.

Season 3
Howard is introduced to Bernadette Rostenkowski by Penny who is dating Leonard. Leonard told Penny about a girlfriend pact he made with Howard where when one of them got a girlfriend, they would try and set the single one up with a friend. Of the girlfriend. At first, Howard and Bernadette could not find anything in common, but immediately felt a connection when until found but they both have overbearing mothers.

Bernadette later breaks up with Howard for an unspecified reason.

Season 4
It's then revealed that Bernadette saw Howard using his World of Warcraft character to have sex with another person's character, which ended their relationship. After a casual date, they immediately got back together.

Howard eventually proposes marriage to Bernadette and she accepts ("The Herb Garden Germination").

Season 5
Howard is upset when he finds out Bernadette doesn't like children, but in the end she agrees to have kids with him if he becomes a stay-at-home-dad while she works ("The Shiny Trinket Maneuver").

Howard is thrown a bachelor party and his impending wedding is almost ruined when a drunken Raj reveals Howard's secret sexual history which upsets Bernadette. Howard then says to the girls, including Bernadette who hears him through her bedroom door, that his old self is gone and that he is now a better man, because of Bernadette ("The Stag Convergence").

Howard and Bernadette get married on the roof of the apartment building with all 5 of their friends, ordained as ministers to marry them. He then takes off to outer space from Russia with his friends and new wife watching ("The Countdown Reflection").

Season 8
Howard learns that his mother died in her sleep while in Florida, leaving him devastated. He is then comforted by Bernadette and the rest of their friends and Sheldon also comforts him, telling him that he has friends who will always be there for him, something Sheldon didn't have when his father died. Later that night, he and Bernadette leave for Florida for the funeral ("The Comic Book Store Regeneration").

Career
Howard is an aerospace engineer. He has worked in the astronautical engineering lab for three years as of the first season. He began working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Operations Center prior to the series, and he has his own mechanical engineering lab.

Howard designed a satellite which is currently orbiting Jupiter's largest moon taking high-resolution digital photographs 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. 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.

In "The Russian Rocket Reaction", NASA selected his team's design for a deep field space telescope that will be installed on the International Space Station, granting him the opportunity to fly aboard a Soyuz rocket to observe its deployment on the space station as a payload specialist for Expedition 31. Subsequently, Howard was requested to report to the NASA Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, for astronaut training. He completed human centrifuge training and survival training in the wilderness, in addition to experiencing zero-g on a reduced gravity aircraft. Following a Soyuz capsule pressurization test failure, the three-week mission had initially been scrubbed, but NASA rescheduled for an earlier launch from Kazakhstan, during which liftoff commenced with a minor fuel leak.

Subsequently, with Leonard Hofstadter, he has built a multiwire proportional counter for detecting cosmic particles.

Characterization
Cheeky, tenderhearted and supposedly suave, Howard provides outrageous techniques in an attempt to get girls in the first three seasons, none of which are remotely successful. Howard's techniques to approach women are varied, including magic and card tricks, ventriloquism, and techniques from the Mystery Method, such as peacocking and negging. He is consistently depicted as the most sex-crazed of the guys, although he doesn't think his sexual behavior is any different from other men. One time, he developed a mathematical formula for the likelihood of him having sex by applying and modifying the Drake equation to include the "Wolowitz coefficient," which he defined as "neediness times dress size squared." He stated, "I'm a horny engineer... I never joke about math or sex." He often fantasizes about several actresses, including Katee Sackhoff, but apparently every woman is his type. Howard describes himself as a romantic, although he usually comes across as overtly sexual and, in Penny's words, disgusting. However, as the series progresses, Howard becomes dedicated to Bernadette, although he still uses pick-up lines. He reveals more of his facets to Bernadette. As part of his delusions regarding himself, he opines that he is a "tender-hearted poet" and "crazy daredevil". He claims to appear confident and worldly, though he admits he is not. Also, in the first three seasons, he often put chasing women ahead of his friends, a fact that often annoyed them. Examples of this were seen such as when he chose to have sex with Leslie Winkle instead of covering his friends during paintball, getting them shredded. Also, he chose to chase a woman instead of help Raj during a kite competition, costing Raj a kite that he had been sent from India.

Howard is multilingual, using many tongues to try to impress the ladies, sadly to little avail. Most of the languages were revealed in the pilot; in revealed order, they are English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi. Howard also speaks Klingon (and plays Klingon Boggle). As shown in "The Wiggly Finger Catalyst", he also knows sign language, and in "The Hawking Excitation", he speaks Japanese and Binary-coded ASCII. However, Howard may not be as competent a polyglot as he believes. In "The Dumpling Paradox", the owner of Szechuan Palace referred to Howard 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, he addressed Penny in Russian (saying "Ты очень красивая девушка" — "You are a very beautiful girl"), but used bad pronunciation. Sheldon also corrected him in "The Hawking Excitation"," when Howard made a mistake in binary. On the contrary, he speaks his French without any speaking errors. At a cost of his alleged suaveness, Howard can be obnoxious, flippantly derisive and arrogant to an extreme: before he met Bernadette, he made a constant habit of mocking and belittling Leonard about his relationship with Penny as if it had no chance of progressing, completely ignoring the fact that he himself was not in a relationship for the sake of seeming superior to somebody else. Also, when he makes any a accomplishment that he can lord over other people, he will relentlessly remind people about it - most commonly, he brags about having been to space and being the designer for technology that boarded the International Space Station. This particular factor goes to such an extent that people find his bragging extremely annoying and gratuitous, but he barely seems to notice how incessantly he is talking about it. This mostly stemmed from the belief that going into space would be the greatest accomplishment he will ever achieve, and not being able to discuss it would, in his opinion, downgrade its value to him. In spite of this, Howard seemed to believe that simply being an astronaut who went to space made him an American hero.

In addition, after he met Bernadette, he first started treating her like a house-wife, and when she stated it felt like it wasn't her house, he answered '''Of course it's your house. Why else would you be cleaning it all the time?'' ' and expects her to cater to him in the same way his mother did. He even shamelessly admitted that he'd hoped that, when he met a girl, she would be more like Megan Fox from Transformers (Who is an extremely attractive, but notoriously objectified person, indicating a slightly male-chauvinistic streak). He also tended to act extremely childishly, being lazy enough that Bernadette even set up a 'chore chart' for every time he helped around the house, but even then he only did the bare minimum of housework and expected Bernadette to do it instead.

Where his father Sam Wolowitz is concerned, Howard has an extremely complex attitude and opinion. He is repeatedly shown to be furious and resentful towards his father for abandoning him to live with his mother, which is understandable. When he discovers a letter from his father, and learns that Sheldon had prematurely read it, his ultimate reaction is to burn the letter because he doesn't want to hear anything that his father has to say, but he is even angrier when he becomes the only one who has no idea what was in the letter. When he meets his half-brother by his father's relationship with another woman, Howard experiences shock at the discovery that his father had another, visibly developed family. In spite of this, Howard is extremely shameless in this regard and will deliberately use his father's abandonment of him to extricate sympathy out of other people, which is often perceived as shallow and melodramatic.

Once Howard finds a joke he likes, he sticks with it. Sheldon even describes him as the funny one in their group, while Howard has said of himself that he is quirky. He mimics voices such as Raj's Indian accent and his mother's accent, and often spews cultural stereotypes. He uses slang such as "fo’shizzle to my nerdizzles," demonstrating his supposed street cred. Howard often has married-couple-like arguments with Raj, usually mocking his words or covering for his obnoxiousness, and is the primary means by which Raj is heard whenever Penny is present. Very sensitive, Howard can be traumatized by a hurtful comment from a woman and there is a glimmer of goodness in him that he allowed Penny to see. In fairnesss, when this actually happened with Penny, he entirely deserved it because he was making insensitive, borderline misogynistic suggestions towards her and had done so at multiple opportunities in the past, and couldn't even notice that he was being conceited and insulting towards her. Howard's misogyny has also had violent consequences - when Penny engaged in a ferocious brawl with Alicia, Howard screamed with excitement at seeing a girl-fight, and immediately restrained Leonard out of terror that he would try to break it up - the fight resulted in Penny receiving several brutal injuries, and Howard did not even have the decency to apologise for his part in her injuries.

Howard spends a large amount of time playing 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). He likes reading comics, similar to his friends, and is a Dungeon Master. He has an entire closet of magic tricks. A model rocket enthusiast, Howard 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. He also once sent a signal around the world via the Internet just to turn on a lamp.

He is asthmatic, allergic to peanuts, almonds and walnuts, prone to canker sores and pink eye, succumbs to seasickness, has an incredibly high genetic risk of heart illness, and has transient idiopathic arrhythmia. His small size and thin build are also the source of many jokes for people who know him.

Aside from being a huge Neil Diamond fan, along with Amy, Howard is heavily implied to enjoy The Beatles due to his "Ringo" haircut and them being on his personalised CD disc.

Physical Appearance
Howard is a rather short man in approximately his late thirties. He is 5' 4" (1.63 m) (one inch shorter than Leonard) with brown hair and blue eyes. He sports a bowl haircut and wears loud, vintage, 1960-era outfits with a matching color scheme: a V-neck or tee shirt over a turtleneck or dickey with a pin,in the shape of a aliens head, on the neck, Vans or Converse sneakers, and skinny pants with collectible belt buckles, often being a reference to geek culture, although he only owns one belt. Howard's pajamas are silk gowns embroidered with his initials, " H W J ", befitting his bedroom containing satin sheets, remote-controlled romantic music, and mood lighting set by lightsabers overhanging his bed. He also has suggestive glow in the dark posters on the ceiling. His preferred mode of transportation is his motor scooter, though in "The Parking Spot Escalation", he gets a car of his own.

Howard's wacky outfits now have a section of their own under Howard's Wardrobe.

Howard's Bedroom (until Season 6)
This section has now become its own page at Howard's Bedroom.

Family

 * Father: Sam Wolowitz
 * Mother: Debbie Wolowitz (deceased)
 * Brother: Josh Wolowitz (half-brother)
 * Uncles: Murray Wolowitz, Uncle Louie, Elliot
 * Aunts: Aunt Barbara, Betty, Gladys
 * Second Cousin: Jeanie
 * Cousin: David, Marty
 * Wife: Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz
 * Daughter Halley Wolowitz
 * Father-in-law: Mike Rostenkowski
 * Mother-in-law: Mrs. Rostenkowski
 * Brother-in-law: Joey Rostenkowski
 * Siblings-in-law: other Siblings-in-law

Howard is noted for living with his overbearing Jewish mother Debbie Wolowitz (to Howard she lives with him), who always makes his life miserable at home with her nosy nature as well as her barrage of disturbing questions, and apparently is oblivious to his accomplishments as a grown-up, usually treating him like he is still a child, thus filling the stereotype of a Jewish mother. Never seen on-screen except for an overhead glimpse in the Season Five finale, and a late season Six episode where she is seen from behind through an ajar door no less than three times. She only communicates with Howard by yelling to him in an obnoxious manner, which results in awkward long-distance conversations, with Howard frustratingly yelling back at her. Such behavior prompts him to call her a "crazy old lady". Howard stated that she had safety bars on his bed until he was seventeen in the Season Two finale. Despite this fact, Howard likes to be mothered to some degree, has an unresolved Oedipus complex and seems to appreciate some of his mother's cooking, especially her brisket, a dish that Howard refers to 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'). It is implied strongly that his mom is incredibly fat and disturbingly masculine, causing Leonard to believe she was Howard's dad when he first heard her. It has been stated that she also has a large mustache. Despite the fact that she made his life miserable and that he often wished for her death, in "The Comic Book Store Regeneration," Howard is devastated by the news that his mother died in her sleep while visiting relatives in Florida.

In "The Precious Fragmentation", Howard reveals that his father left his family when Howard was eleven. To help Howard overcome the loss, 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. In "The Hot Troll Deviation", Howard infers that the distal cause of why he "tries too hard" with women is due to abandonment issues, as opposed to the proximal cause being his looks (as stated in "The Killer Robot Instability"): "I’m just another lonely nerd, living with his mother, trying to find any scrap of happiness he can. You know, maybe to make up for the fact that his dad left him when he was eleven." His parents were drunk all the time and it has never been established why his father left.

Howard lost his virginity to his second cousin Jeanie in a Toyota Corolla after they locked eyes over the pickled herring at his Aunt Barbara's house during his Uncle Murray's funeral, and ever since Howard gets aroused by looking at pickled herring, all of which Leonard and Raj find extremely funny. His cousin David provided him with the half-carat ring for Bernadette. He has a cousin in Israel who lives with her husband Avi, as well as cousins from Fort Lauderdale, while his Aunt Betty (his mother's sister) and Uncle Elliot are from Palm Springs. Howard also has an Uncle Louie, whom he ridicules based on a photo of him in a bathing suit. He says they are "Jewish hobbits," as evidenced by dinner at his house on Rosh Hashanah. After Howard's great-grandfather immigrated to the United States, he ran a little butcher shop on the Lower East Side of New York, ripping people off. Howard's family has a genetically high risk of heart disease.

In "The Closet Reconfiguration" Sheldon finds an unopened letter from Howard's father that he read. Eventually, everyone knows what is in the letter except Howard, who had burnt it earlier in the episode. When Howard tells them he both wants and does not want to know the contents, his friends come up with a compromise. They each tell him a plausible story, only one of which is the actual truth, so he hears the contents, but isn't sure which one (except for Sheldon's version.)

In "The Comic Book Store Regeneration", Howard learns that his mother died in her sleep while visiting Howard's Aunt Gladys in Florida. He and Bernadette fly to Florida for the funeral and the airline temporarily loses his mother's urn with her ashes in it. Howard is distort because he didn't get to see her one last time because he was too busy to drive her to the airport. Howard promises that they will never be separated again making Bernadette fear that the urn will end up in their bedroom.

In "The Fortification Implementation," a young man shows up at Howard's door and has just learned through the lawyer handling Howard's mother's estate that Howard was his half-brother. Their mutual father, Sam Wolowitz had a second family after leaving Howard's mother. His name is Josh Wolowitz and he is an oceanography student in San Diego. Though it is awkward at first, the two half-brothers bond over Howard being an astronaut and the creepy personality that Howard used to have and Josh does have.

In "The Birthday Synchronicity", Bernadette is rushed to the hospital and gives birth to their daughter Hallie Wolowitz.

Rajesh Koothrappali
Raj is Howard's best friend. Howard invites his buddy over to his house all the time. Howard has called them co-pilots of the, and they have weekly routines they do together. However, Howard becomes easily distracted and sometimes abandons him, only to be unmindful of any wrongdoing. Sadly, he taught Raj his dance moves, and Howard seems to wear off on him, as Raj can be very womanizing and uses slang. He scoffs at Raj when he says something stupid, and has once complained that he's going to end up with swimmer's ear with Raj whispering in his ear, although Sheldon cannot tolerate his moist breath in his ear altogether.

Despite the fact that Howard is undeniably obsessed with women, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, Leonard's mother, says they are in an "ersatz homosexual marriage". Amusingly, Raj and Howard have several arguments during the series, in which Raj repeatedly accuses Howard of leaving him for everybody who's only slightly better looking and otherwise assuming the cliche female role in partnership arguments. Season 4 jokingly introduced the possibility of Howard's "latent homosexual tendencies" when appeared as himself in an imaginary conversation with Bernadette and  over his relationship status with Bernadette, but Howard quickly denied it. Before Howard met Bernadette, it was implied that he called Raj "honey", and Debbie Wolowitz is relieved when he has a girl over to the house.

In "The Septum Deviation", Raj has dinner with Howard and Bernie is worried about what to get his parents for their fortieth wedding anniversary. Later Raj gets a call from his father that he has moved out and that his parents are getting divorce lawyers. Howard is visiting him and sympathizes with him. His discussion of their not communicating together causes a fight between Howard and Bernie. Howard invents a game where he quotes Raj and others have to guess if the comment is about the dog he loves or the woman he loves due to his attachment to Cinnamon.

Leonard Hofstadter
Howard met Leonard in 2003 as seen in a flashback of "The Staircase Implementation". Howard told Penny that both he and Raj liked Leonard. Leonard has helped him quite often, and Howard faced an allergic reaction partly to provide Leonard's first birthday party. Though, Howard finds Leonard's worries over Penny humorous sometimes, and they like to post embarrassing things about each other on YouTube and Twitter. The two of them made a pact that if either one of them ever got a girlfriend, the other one would set up the single guy with one of her girlfriends. When it comes to agreements and women, they frequently fight. Leonard does enjoy poking fun at Howard's height, although he is only a quarter of an inch taller ("And don't you forget it!"). But despite any problems, the two are good friends and help each other out often.

Sheldon Cooper
Sheldon often makes fun of Howard for not having a doctoral degree and for being an engineer, referring to engineers as "noble semi-skilled laborers" and "the Oompa-Loompas of science", and calling engineering "the slow younger brother of physics". He has referred to their group of scientists as "a group of geniuses and their friend Howard", thus ruling him out, and called Howard "a treasured acquaintance" instead of a close friend like Leonard, Raj and Penny. Sheldon describes Raj as Howard's primary friend, Leonard as Howard's secondary friend, and himself as Howard's tertiary friend.

However, Sheldon still says that if he ever needs a slightly apathetic tertiary friend, he is there for him, and refers to him as "the funny one" in their group. Though often annoyed by Sheldon, Howard is able to perceive when Sheldon is upset, unlike with best friend Raj. Howard has varied between not really caring whether he and Sheldon are friends and being visibly wounded when Sheldon is dismissive of him. During the time when Sheldon considered who to jettison from his circle of friends and said critically that Howard doesn't have a Ph.D. and isn't available to play video games during the, Howard seemed pleased that he might be freed from Sheldon's friendship, only to watch as Sheldon then ordered a horrified Raj out of the circle of friends. Later, the "treasured acquaintance" remark makes Howard's face fall as if hearing that Leonard, Penny and Raj are considered friends while he isn't, is upsetting to him.

In "The Friendship Turbulence" Bernadette is tired of Sheldon always degrading her husband. Sheldon reveals that the first time they met; Howard told him that he was a cross between C3PO and Pee Wee Herman, calling him C-3-P-Wee Herman. Howard then followed that by replacing slides from Sheldon's lecture with pictures of nude fat women bending over, quickly progression into a decade long rivalry of pranks, such as unwanted magazine subscriptions. To try to improve their relationship, Howard invites Sheldon to join him on a trip to Houston where he is speaking at NASA. Howard gives him a tour, helps him through the turbulence they experience on the plane trip and helps him deal with having seen his mother having sex. He notes that he drove away a man interested in his mother and that Sheldon should not stand in the way of his mother's happiness.

In "The Comic Book Store Regeneration", when the gang receives the devastating news that Debbie Wolowitz died, Sheldon comforted Howard by reminding him that he has friends who will be there for him, something Sheldon did not have when George Cooper Sr. (his father) died.

In "The 2003 Approximation", Raj and Howard form a band call "Footprints on the Moon", when Stuart is looking for live music in his store. They write a song about Indiana Jones taking on Thor which is a cool song, but not easy to dance to.

Penny
Since the beginning of the series, Howard has shown interest in Penny, but the interest is primarily sexual and she always turns him down. She commonly sees Howard as disgusting and inhuman. However, Penny's animosity toward Howard has mellowed somewhat since Howard began dating her work colleague Bernadette Rostenkowski, to whom he is now married. Penny introduced them to each other, is very nosy about their relationship, and once questioned if Bernadette truly loves Howard. She thinks Howard's story about his father is extremely sad; Howard used this fact as leverage for Penny to help him get Bernadette back, after tricking her to open the door for whom she thought was Sheldon. After Bernadette gets mad at Howard when she hears about some of his sexual exploits from Raj's drunken batchelor party speech, Penny answers the door at Bernadette's apartment and hears Howard's heart-felt apology. He tells Penny that he is a better man because of Bernadette. Penny breaks into tears and tells him, "Oh, my God, Howard. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. And it came out of you.".

Amy Farrah Fowler
Howard has a complicated relationship with Amy. She, like Sheldon, is condescending to him for not having a doctoral degree. Because they don't have a lot in common, he hasn't had much reason to interact with her after their initial meeting. After acknowledging her attitude in "The Scavenger Vortex," they try to find common interests. They start to bond over a mutual love for Neil Diamond music.

Stuart
Howard and Stuart are quite good friends and have been for years.

In season 8, however, Howard has a lot of issues with Stuart, after Stuart finishes helping his mother with her recovery from her broken leg. Stuart did not move out and developed a cozy close relationship with Howard's mother that seemed romantic, while Stuart at times seemed to be replacing Howard and/or Howard's father. During the prom given on the building roof, Stuart further humiliated Howard when he brought Howard's second cousin Jeanie as his prom date, the second cousin to whom Howard lost his virginity in the back of her father's Toyota Corolla.

In "The Commitment Determination", Howard and Bernadette want Stuart to move out of their house. Howard wants Bernadette to break the news to him, but they can't because they learn that it's his birthday so they serve him a cupcake with a candle in it rather than serving him an eviction notice. In "The Sales Call Sublimation", Stuart finally moves out into his own apartment. Though they don't want to admit it, Howard and Bernadette miss him. In "The Viewing Party Combustion", he shows up at the Game of Throne's party to watch the show in costume because Howard played a prank on him. He gets mad at Howard.

Eric Gablehauser
Howard has a complicated relationship with Dr. Eric Gablehauser. Like Sheldon, Dr. Gablehauser mocks Howard for lacking a doctorate and during the Physics Bowl Quiz, Gablehauser gives Howard two warnings for sexual harassment during the quiz. The only time Gablehauser is seen to be respectful to Howard is when they meet in "The Luminous Fish Effect" when Dr. Gablehauser is the new chairman of Caltech's Physics Department. They just shake hands and Gablehauser tells Howard it's nice to meet him.

Beverly Hofstadter
Howard particularly dislikes Leonard's mother Beverly Hofstadter because she is such an annoying cold woman. He is not happy with her thinking that he and Raj are in an ersatz homosexual relationship and not believing the fact that Howard has a girlfriend. It wasn't until later in "The Line Substitution Solution" that Beverly would've seemed to know that Howard is married to a woman.

Unknown Friends
Although Howard is socially awkward like his friends, he has friends in strange, but useful places such as and the  who lend him technology such as military driving simulators to teach Sheldon to drive, spy drones to spy on the Top Model House and advanced security equipment to protect Leonard and Sheldon's apartment after it was robbed. He has also managed to "borrow" expensive equipment, presumably gaining entry due to friends even if he had to steal it. He takes a high-tech robot arm in "The Robotic Manipulation" and gets an extremely expensive camera in "The 43 Peculiarity", which may have required help from his friends.

He also has been shown to have "geeky" friends who enjoy Star Wars and the like. He manages to get the ring in "The Precious Fragmentation" valued by a guy named Eddie Crispo and in that same episode says "I know lots of dangerous people".

Romantic
Among his friends, Howard is the least successful at getting dates, despite his obsessive drive; however, he is the first to end up married.

Summer
At a reception for the new Physics department head, Dr. Eric Gablehauser, Howard shows up with a paid for date named Summer. He introduces her as his special lady and she informs him that touching her will cost extra.

Mikayla
Howard is in Las Vegas to be cheered up by Raj and Leonard after his breakup with Leslie winkle. After a suicidal text, Howard is convinced to come downstairs due to the guys raving about the marvelous shrimp bar. They had hired the prostitute Mikayla who planned to give him the Jewish girlfriend experience. She steps up behind him and says "Boy, would it kill them to put out a nice brisket?" Howard immediately turns around and says, "I'm Howard Wolowitz." Mikayla replies "Hi, I'm Esther Rosenblatt." They are really getting along as she describes all her ethnic-style turn-ons like getting freaky with a bacon cheese burger on the Sabbath. Howard checks with the guys telling them that he knows that she is a hooker. He then thanks them and rejoins her. The story backfires when Raj details these escapades during his bachelor party and Bernadette gets furious at him after she hears about his previously unknown sexual adventures.

Christy Vanderbel
Through Penny, inadvertently, Howard hooked up with Christy, "the whore of ." The two upset Penny by abusing her personal belongings, such as using her loofah mitt and getting her stuffed bear collection sweaty. Christy then had to stay with Howard at his house. Although she displayed signs of affection towards Howard, Christy was highly materialistic, and went out with him only on the condition he buy her stuff and take her shopping; which was more than fine with him. She dumped him when she confronted Howard's mother, who threatened to cut Howard out of the will, as long as he kept going out with her.

Lisa
Howard was introduced to Lisa by her roommate Stephanie Barnett in "The Lizard-Spock Expansion" (S02E08), but she is never seen. She just went through a bad breakup and Stephanie thought she should meet someone fun like Howard. Wolowitz apologized for how their first date ended, and wanted her to come have brisket at his house.

Leslie Winkle


In "The Cushion Saturation" (S02E16), Howard engaged in a "" relationship with Leslie, which brought him a few benefits beside sex, including receiving a rapid prototyper and getting on the research trip to Geneva to check out the CERN Supercollider. However, he still became depressed when Leslie dumped him some time later. In order to cheer him up, Leonard and Raj took Howard to and managed to hire a prostitute for him, giving him the Jewish girlfriend experience.

Bethany
Bethany was a girl that Howard and Raj met ("The Gothowitz Deviation" S03E03) in a Goth nightclub in Hollywood with her friend Sarah. Both guys took a liking to Bethany and ignored Sarah. At Bethany's suggestion, they then went to a tattoo parlor, where Bethany implied she would be with Howard if he got a new tattoo. Howard gave into his fear of the needle and exposed himself and Raj as frauds, causing both women to quickly ditch them.

Emily Sweeney
Howard was set up on a blind date with Emily sometime near 2009 before he met Bernadette. He had a bad stomach and had to go to the bathroom and clogged the toilet, he was too embarrassed to tell her so ran out through the window. They met again in the episode "The Relationship Diremption" where she is now dating Raj. Emily reveals she's okay with it and her friends love the story. They call him "Clogzilla".

Bernadette Rostenkowski


Howard's relationship with Bernadette is easily his most significant romantic relationship. Howard was introduced to Bernadette by Penny after he initiated the pact with Leonard in "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary". At first, she and Howard did not get along, as they appeared to have nothing in common. However, when they found out that they both had overbearing mothers they immediately felt a connection.

He first proposed to her in "The Vengeance Formulation", but she claimed that they had not even slept together yet. His action was most probably influenced by his desire to get her to forgive him and to please her, rather than his desire to spend the rest of his life with her. Although Bernadette rejects his offer, they remain a couple for a time after Howard sings a heartfelt song for her at The Cheesecake Factory, which Penny finds quite embarrassing, but Bernadette finds romantic. Eventually, they break up after she discovers Howard, via his character, having sex with another online character. Bernadette and Howard reconcile and resume their relationship. In "The Herb Garden Germination", Howard proposed again to Bernadette and she accepted. In the fifth season finale, "The Countdown Reflection", the two finally got married in a simple ceremony held on the rooftop of the apartment building, shortly before Howard went to space. In "The Deception Verification", Bernadette must deal with the effects of her mother-in-law's estrogen cream after Howard absorbs a considerable amount of the estrogen cream himself while applying it to his mother's back, and Howard became moody, cranky and effeminate. In "The Workplace Proximity", after Amy starts working at Caltech, Howard mentions that he wouldn't want to be working with Bernadette all day long. Sheldon repeats his comments in front of Bernadette who confronts Howard and then tells him not to come home after he lies about it. Later they apologize to each other. Howard promised to turn over a new leaf and make her his priority, after he finished the new Batman game with Raj, which upset Bernadette again. In "The Romance Resonance", Howard writes a song for the anniversary of his and Bernadette's first date, and asks his friends to provide instrumental backup while he sings the song to Bernadette. Bernadette misses the date because she is forced into hospital quarantine after she dropped a Petrie dish containing a raccoon virus she was studying, so Howard brings his piano to the hospital and everyone sings the song to Bernadette. Bernadette finds the song amazing. In "The Cooper Extraction" Amy points out to the gang that most of them would not know each other if Sheldon had not been part of their lives. Bernadette feels that if she had seen Howard at The Cheesecake Factory, she would have found him cute, but would have been turned off by Raj and Howard's close interaction, Raj was spoon feeding him. Howard figures that if they hadn't met he would have descended into Norman Bates in the movie "Psycho", killed his mother, kept the body and absorbed her personality (i.e. talking for her). In the episode "The Valentino Submergence", Bernie mentions that she is pregnant with their first child without having yet told Howard. In "The Positive Negative Reaction", she tells Howard the news. Howard is at first freaked out a the responsibility and costs of raising a child and then embraces the future as much as Bernie does. In "The Cohabitation Experimentation", they have a sonogram and don't want to know the baby's gender. Raj knows to their discomfort and the couple has a battle of conscious on whether to find out. Also Raj is way too involved in the pregnancy including going into her OB/GYN exams. In "The Fetal Kick Catalyst", after feeling the baby kick, Howard runs out and buys an expensive crib and a minivan. In "The Birthday Synchronicity", Bernadette is rushed to the hospital and gives birth to their daughter Halley Wolowitz.

Glacinda the Troll
Glacinda the Troll is an avatar in World of Warcraft that Howard had, according to Bernadette, "clicked the brains out [of]" It was revealed in "The Hot Troll Deviation" by Leonard that Glacinda was a male member of the University's janitorial staff. This episode is the only one where Glacinda is mentioned. Despite the minority of this character, Howard's dalliance with Glacinda caused his initial breakup with Bernadette.

Jeanie
While Howard, Raj, and Leonard waited to observe the Leonid meteor shower in The Adhesive Duck Deficiency, Howard discovered also camping at the site a couple of middle school female teachers, aged in their fifties, who share with Howard their cookies. Howard, Raj, and Leonard eat the cookies without realizing the cookies contain marijuana, and the three of them get high. While the three of them were stoned, Howard admitted that he lost his virginity at a funeral to his second cousin Jeanie. The story gets mentioned again by Raj at Howard's bachelor party, almost breaking up Howard and Bernadette. During a prom party, Stuart brought Jeanie as his prom date, further humiliating Howard.

Religion
In an episode of StarTalk podcast, the show's co-creator and executive producer Bill Prady said, “Howard is culturally religious. Jews are well represented among scientists because of a cultural predisposition toward academic careers, so here's a character whose religion is cultural for him, but not particularly significant.” Although, Howard is not very serious about his faith and does not keep kosher. For instance, he eats pork often and without regret; and when the price of pork went up at the group's favorite Chinese restaurant, he remarked "it's getting tougher and tougher to be a bad Jew." He is not at all concerned about postponing sex until wedlock (like every other religious character on the show, except for Sheldon's parents). On another occasion, when Howard tried to date Sheldon's sister, Missy, he said he would kill his rabbi with a pork chop if his religion was an impediment, and one of the reasons he was happy to continue dating Bernadette (who is Catholic) was the chance to really annoy his mom. Despite these actions, Howard has shown some belief in his faith. When he and Raj posed as Goths to pick up women, he wore fake-tattoo sleeves and refused to get real ones so he could be buried in a cemetery. He also apparently attends High Holiday services, as Sheldon once critically noted that he was not available to compete in Halo during those times. Howard scared away his mother's boyfriend during a very vindictive bar mitzvah speech.

Trivia

 * He is the only one of the group, other than Penny and Stuart, to lack a PhD. He is often mocked by Sheldon and others for this.
 * On a shelf in Howard's room, there is a replica model of the 211-V Plasma Cutter used by Isaac Clarke in the first Dead Space game. The tool is also seen being used in Dead Space 2 by a girl named Ellie Langford which she fires at Isaac in Hostility.
 * Howard has a master’s degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It required the completion of 144 units of grad work and an original thesis.
 * His astronaut nickname has been designated as "Froot Loops".
 * Howard has a different chest hair count in "The Cushion Saturation" and "The 21-Second Excitation".
 * Howard wears alien pins on his collar in every episode, yet the pin has not been mentioned thus far.
 * Even though Howard is Jewish, like Raj, he does not seem to take his faith seriously and hardly keeps Kosher.
 * Howard has committed the most illegal acts of the group, yet has apparently never been imprisoned for it. He has a large amount of sexual harassment complaints, destroyed government property (driving the Mars Rover into a ditch and destroying the data), stolen government property for his own use(using a camera from the Mars rover to spy on Sheldon, diverting a satellite to find the Models of America mansion), unlawful surveillance (installing cameras to spy on women, such as giving Penny a webcam teddy bear and installing cameras in the hallway to spy on Penny.) Interestingly, Howard's destruction of the Mars Rover is revealed by Sheldon to the FBI, yet Howard is never actually arrested for the act.
 * Howard is 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) tall, the height of Simon Helberg. After Leonard teased him regarding his small stature in "The Hot Troll Deviation", he stated that Leonard, who is established to be 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m), was only about a quarter of an inch taller than him.
 * He weighs 118 pounds, as revealed by Bernadette in "The Engagement Reaction".
 * Howard and his mother live in Altadena, California, north of Pasadena, until he moves out in "The Habitation Configuration" (S6E07) after he was married.
 * Howard wears Vans and Converse shoes.
 * 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). In "The Hawking Excitation", Howard actually gets the chance to meet him, helping him with his wheelchair equipment. Howard would later recommend Leonard to Hawking for his sea expedition, which Hawking agreed to.
 * Howard's online username/persona/identity is Wolowizard.
 * 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. He also plays Age of Conan where he is a Guardian named Sir Howard of Wolowitz.
 * Howard enjoys (and is very good 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 cell phones.
 * Howard has two FX light sabers displayed on the wall of his bedroom, which he can ignite by remote to set the mood. In the flashback of Howard's room in 2003, he had two plastic toy blue light sabers on the wall, likely replaced later on with the FX sabers.
 * 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 maintains that his mother lived with him, rather than him having lived with his mother.
 * Howard gets around Pasadena by means of gas-powered scooter, although he may have gotten a car because in "The Robotic Manipulation" he states that he smuggled the robotic arm to his car. He does gets a new car in "The Parking Spot Escalation".
 * He has a massive collection of belt buckles, yet only has one belt.
 * Howard's collection of belt buckles include 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 plays the drums on Rock Band.
 * 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.
 * 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 was bullied as a child. He received the common treatment of wedgies and swirlies.
 * His nightmare is to shower after the game and for other guys see him naked.
 * Howard bears similarities to comedian Moe Howard, such as his haircut, name, and Jewish heritage.
 * Though considered the least smart member of the group for not having a doctorate, Howard appears to be smarter than his friends acknowledge him as, such as besting Sheldon at insect biology in Season 3's second episode. He also states in "The Hawking Excitation" that he has a valid understanding of physics.
 * He, on one instance, was vengeful to Sheldon for saying he couldn't understand Physics, not letting him see Stephen Hawking and shunning him in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Klingon, Binary Code and Gangsta ("Hells Naw").
 * He is the only one of the original group that hasn't seen Penny naked. Leonard has seen Penny naked many times due to them dating, being engaged and now married, Sheldon during "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency" and Raj when he 'slept' with her. Not from a lack of trying, such as when he gave Penny a teddy-bear that had a webcam in it. However, Sheldon revealed that right after the guys met Penny, Howard had found the movie "Serial Ape-ist" online, which depicted Penny topless.
 * Both Howard and Sheldon connect with their girlfriends over the personalities of their mothers.
 * He is the first one of the geeks to get married, and the first to get engaged.
 * Howard may be the basis for Miho Hidaka from the manga/anime series Prodigy Teacher Yuto.
 * Bill Prady described Howard as perfecting Pepe Le Pew, the skunk from Looney Tunes, who constantly tried to get a girl to love him.
 * At age 15, Howard lost his virginity to his second cousin in her father's Toyota Corolla.
 * Howard's Bar Mitsvah bonds are $2,600 and two trees in Israel.
 * His mother calls him 'Bubula'.
 * Out of all the original main cast (Himself, Sheldon, Raj, Leonard and Penny), he is the only one that was actually born in Pasadena (Sheldon is from Texas, Raj is from India, Leonard is from New Jersey and Penny is from Nebraska).
 * Incidentally, he is also the only one of the improved main cast to possess the "born in Pasadena" trait (Stuart's origin is unknown, but has strongly been hinted to be in Rhode Island; Amy is from Glendale; Bernadette is from Yorba Linda).


 * Howard lost his virginity to his second cousin Jeanie in her father's Toyota Corolla.
 * Some of Howard's "flirts" included:
 * "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've got a handful of pixie dust with your name on it."
 * "If that's a working stethoscope, then maybe you'd like to hear my heart skip a beat."
 * (Trying to hit on Summer Glau; Raj later stole this line) "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."
 * He has also called Penny a "cheesecake-scented goddess".
 * Howard, Raj, Leonard and Sheldon are the only characters of the current main cast who have appeared in every episode (not counting the Unaired Pilot).
 * Howard knows ASL.
 * Howard is right-handed.
 * Howard is Jewish.
 * He once dropped Raj's phone in a urinal.

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