For the fans of big bang theory here is a note to make you miss the show more until next season.  

  
I firmly believe that the show’s characters are believable and may be based on real characters, some of whom I have known and worked with. My back-story here is I lived and worked in Oxford University in the Department of Biochemistry. I did Nuclear Magnetic Resonance research and worked with some brilliant minds – several modeled in the Big Bang Theory. Below I will discuss Leonard, Sheldon, Raj and Howard, as well as Leslie Winkle and how my Oxford friends match them.

Let’s just start with Sheldon. If anyone thinks that Sheldon’s character is extreme think again. I can assure you that a person with a genius intellect, likely child prodigy or savant, could most definitely be SO socially inappropriate. I knew a physicist who worked in Chemistry in Oxford University and claimed, “life started at the Schrödinger’s Equation” for him and he meant it. If a person said she raised rabbits as pets he would extol the virtues of hasenpfeffer saying rabbits were tasty and tender; being inconsiderate and insensitive but not trying to be mean. He had Sheldon like neuroses concerning driving and would never take a hand off the steering wheel – gripping it like a toddler hanging on to mom’s fingers. He would go the speed limit exactly maintaining that speed until he was much too close to the car in front of him relenting to slow down only at the last minute by slamming on the breaks; claiming it best to maintain speed and only slow when necessary. He had an identic memory and could recite movie lines often completing casual sentences with the movie lines of random movies he happened to recall fit those lines in the conversation. So I would be talking to him and string three words together that may have come from Aliens and he would then continue those lines from the movie. Truthfully, I think he did it as an excuse to shut me up. This guy was about 6 foot tall, 90 pounds, long hair down to the middle of his back and finger nails each a minimum of one inch long. The nails were clean and pristine because he constantly was cleaning them. He would type using the tips of his finger nails and loved to make as much noise as possible on the keys. This is a real person I had to dinner at my place on numerous occasions. He was serious entertainment in small doses.

 
Okay how about Raj. Poor Raj with selective mutism being unable to talk to females without drinking. I had another colleague in Oxford who was just like that. He was a centerpiece in all the guy activities and a wall flower when females were around. The one and only time I know of that he asked a woman out on a date, she was sitting next to him in the computer lab and he sent her an email asking her to the pub. She said yes and they were married about a year later. It was a lovely wedding.

   
Howard is almost too easy because his awkward desire to meet and be with women is typical of too many of us. Sad to admit it, but yes. Anyway, my personal friend who most reminds me of Howard is a guy I used to play soccer with in Oxford. He was a gifted engineer and, like Howard making the space toilet, could make anything from the most random bits of lab “junk”. Us guys would go to the pub and he would buy drinks for the American Tourists trying to impress the women by flexing his brain muscles. Also, like Howard, he was a masters student amongst Ph.Ds. Like Howard he felt somewhat inferior because of that, but he did eventually enter the Ph.D. program and obtained his doctorate. Interestingly the degree never changed the dynamics amongst us. My Howard analogy would also make comments to woman about what he thought of the “size” of his friends’ anatomy. Showering after a soccer game with him most of us just would face the wall to avoid being judged a grow-er or a show-er.

    
Let me mention Sara Gilbert’s character, Leslie Winkle. Again, my personal analogy is even more extreme than Leslie on the show. My friend and colleague was a senior Ph.D. candidate in Oxford when I met her. She was in a position of power and authority in the system for multiple very valid reasons. This woman was competent and confident in many ways. Her behavior towards men matches if not exceeds the interactions of Leslie and Leonard. My colleague had a very well known “friends with benefits” relationship with another student her junior. He told me it was a bizarre situation, in that she propositioned him with a list of pragmatic conditions that he could accept or reject – non negotiable. He accepted and they pursued it until he entered in traditional and monogamous romantic relationship. The friends with benefits ended between them with no emotional ties, but with the door was left open to reengage if the opportunity should arise. I was told she moved on to someone else.

    
Leonard! Leonard is who all of us geeks want to be. He is pretty much the best we can hope for. His awkward relationship with Penny is a reflection of how many of us interact with “normal” people. To be blunt, for a geek; Leonard is too good to be true. He has his feet in both worlds and that is very hard to do. Usually we are like fish in the fishbowl looking out at the big ol’ world but we’re stuck in this microcosm of science and technology. If more of us could be like Leonard, we would not need to go to scientific meetings and socialize with people from other fishbowls. So regarding Leonard there is a little bit of Leonard in all of us. We more or less know we are different, wish we were not so different and try little forays into the land of Penny. Usually those are unsuccessful.

Yeah, I wish I could be more like Leonard.