Larry Fleinhardt

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Professor Lawrence Fleinhardt

Larry Fleinhardt is a fictional character in the television show NUMB3RS, played by Peter MacNicol.

He is a professor at CalSci and best friend and colleague of Charlie Eppes. A brilliant theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Dr. Fleinhardt researches string theory, his 11-dimensional supergravity theory, double-special relativity, black holes, and gravitational waves, using LIGO to check predictions on quantum corrections. He may have even found a way to express Calabi-Yau manifolds in a way that goes beyond a non-vanishing harmonic spinor and, independent of Charlie, recently published a work of genius entitled Zero Point Energy and Quantum Cosmology which could provide insight into the cosmological constant problem. Larry constantly challenges Charlie to employ a broader point of view to his work with the FBI and often assists him with this work, as when his cosmic listening project helped him with his signal analysis. However, Professor Fleinhardt wishes his pal Eppes would continue with academia rather than consult with the FBI. Along with Alan Eppes, Larry provides words of wisdom to Charlie, reminding him that human behavior is unpredictable. He even comforts Don Eppes about his love life with his perspective on quantum entanglement, yet Charlie has accused him of "mixing cosmic metaphors" after he inadvertently referred to his relationship with Amita Ramanujan as a black hole.

In the episode "Dirty Bomb," Don asks Larry about a radioactive cesium ion (pictured above). He and Charlie explain the dangers of the ionizing radiation it emits.

Dr. Fleinhardt has been teaching for 20 years, and Charlie has even attended his classes. He is quite awkward in social situations; his students have described him as "boring and intellectually inaccessible." Some of his irregular views have made Charlie wonder "What kind of crazy Kool-Aid do they make you drink before you join the physics department?" Usually, Larry seems relaxed, but at times he can be a bit neurotic, or "Fleinhardt." An absent-minded professor, he has forgotten whether he was entering or leaving the CalSci library. The "Doc" even had his own Eureka moment in "All's Fair," wherein he applied fluid mechanics to the analysis of footprint slabs he submerged in a jacuzzi only to determine, from the relative displacement of water by each indentation, that the suspect to a murder had a short right leg — a discovery that discounted a particular individual from guilt — and ran to the streets dripping wet in a robe, screaming that it was Archimedes all over again, only to forget where he put his clothes the next minute. Larry is disorganized like Charlie and claims that there is symmetry to his chaos. On a similar note, his antics have led him to eat purely white food at times to maintain supersymmetry, a focus in his research. Apparently, as mentioned in "Backscatter," Fleinhardt is awful when it comes to geography — he called to ask if the string theory convention he was already at was in St. Louis or Cleveland, when it was actually in Minneapolis.

Fleinhardt had an addiction with card counting in his youth, which he feels ashamed about and has compared his discomfort during field research at a casino as being at the event horizon of a black hole. He has a distaste for number theory, but enjoys hiking, and had begun to wonder about his life choices, missed (romantic) opportunities, and the impact of children (or wormholes in Larry's view) on people's lives. Larry has noted how demanding physics can be on his social life (that is nigh-nonexistent as a result of his work) and, along with Charlie, understands Einstein's feelings that one can either do physics or have a family, but not both. Meanwhile, he has realized his affections for Megan, and describes to his confused friends, the Eppes family, that they are closer to understanding the mystery of gamma ray bursts than his feelings in this matter. When he found out she was kidnapped in "Two Daughters," Larry's emotions overcame him. She likes him for his unpredictability and Charlie said Larry likes her a lot, though it's hard to decipher from his cosmic metaphors. Charlie has not seen such an emotional side to Larry as when he speaks of her and, as Larry has commented himself, his previously unstructured relationship with Megan made baryogenesis look neat. He has recently commented that his relationship with Megan has made him less concentrated on his work. The only thing he remembers of his mother is her warm smile and tweezed eyebrows. He rarely has spoken of his father, a painter who wished his son had seen the world the way he did and was disappointed by his son's path; Fleinhardt expressed his sorrow with a memory he does not gladly inhabit, stating it is a father's folly to impose their will on their son. Consequently, Larry has an exhaustive knowledge of art and attempted a career as a painter but failed as he was required by his father to study the great works of the masters before he could create an original work.

Larry frequently wears casual patterned shirts and drove a 1944 Volvo until he acquired a 1931 black Model A Ford that he cherishes. Fleinhardt owned a personally restored 1877 Victorian home which he sold in "Bones of Contention", and had for some time since been living as somewhat of a vagabond, finding shelter in his office, his car, hotels, and friends' places and often sleeping on couches or in CalSci's steam tunnels. Larry didn't want to inconvenience Charlie and thought that sharing one bathroom would be problematic, and further did not want to move in with Megan and ruin something "before it even began." He believed it allowed him to focus on the sublime rather than the mundane. Alan had commented on his state during one of their chess games, providing the same advice he has dispensed to all geniuses he knows: "Don't be an idiot." Contrarily, Megan found his situation oddly attractive. Wanting less complexity and more structure in his life as well as time to be with Megan, Larry decided to buy a condo. However, life has never been simple for Larry, and Alan has said that simplicity may be impossible for him so he must deal with structured complexity. Both he and Charlie are members of the North American Sundial Society, and they have worked together on various contests for the physics department, including a paper airplane contest.

[edit] Notes

Like Charlie, Larry is a genius and possibly the most advanced intellect in L.A. as Alan has remarked.
He graduated from college at the age of 19.
Larry hopes to win a Nobel Prize for his multi-dimensional supergravity theory.
In "The Mole," after Larry published his paper on quantum cosmology in Physics Weekly (an academic journal) without Charlie as a collaborator, Fleinhardt and Eppes realized that they work best together, and Larry compared them to Simon & Garfunkel.
Dr. Fleinhardt has known Charlie since Eppes attended his quantum physics class at Princeton University at the age of 13. Alan said that all the family heard about that first year was Professor Fleinhardt.
Sometimes equations will stand out or "shimmer" to him.
Larry knew Richard Feynman. His character is like Feynman who is noted for being both a genius and an enigmatic character. Like Feynman, he percusses, but never for pleasure — he drums away problems.
Fleinhardt doesn't have a cell phone, considering them to be "electronic leashes," and his number is not listed.
As a child, Larry saw a merry-go-round crush a man and now has a fear of horses.