Howard Wolowitz

Howard is the boldest of the gang with women and the least successful. He hits on Penny from day one with lines in several languages and magic tricks, getting nowhere. He lives with his mother, Mrs. Wolowitz, who treats him like a child and yells at him from another room, and he shares almost everything with Raj. The two are so inseparable that the gang keeps joking they're a couple.

His father walked out on the family when he was 11, which explains a lot about his attachment to his mother and his need to impress. At work, he designs hardware for NASA, but the physicists in the gang treat him like a glorified mechanic.

Penny sets Howard up with her Cheesecake Factory coworker Bernadette, a microbiology student with a sweet voice and a fierce temper. They click right away. The relationship has its ups and downs: they split when she feels Howard isn't taking it seriously, then reunite with Penny's help.

Howard grows up because of her, stops acting like a teenager and proposes. Bernadette finishes her PhD and takes a job at a pharmaceutical company, earning far more than he does. At season's end, they fight over an expensive watch Howard wants to give her.

Howard is picked as a payload specialist on a mission to the International Space Station. NASA training is a nightmare, and astronaut Mike Massimino saddles him with a humiliating nickname, Froot Loops, after overhearing his mother mention the cereal on a call.

Not wanting to leave single, Howard marries Bernadette in a rush on the building's rooftop, surrounded by friends, and launches in a Soyuz. On the station, he suffers through his Russian crewmates and panic attacks. Back on Earth, he feels like a hero until he realizes nobody cares as much as he does, and learns to live with Bernadette without his mother around.

While Stuart is living with Mrs. Wolowitz, she travels to Florida and dies suddenly. Howard and Bernadette get the news over the phone, and the gang rallies around him.

Howard tries to move on, but grief shows up in small things, like finding his mother's furniture in Stuart's new comic book store. He and Bernadette move into her house, full of memories.

Bernadette finds out she's pregnant and waits to tell Howard, who is terrified of being a father like his own. They welcome baby Halley and, soon after, Bernadette gets pregnant again. Neil Michael is born, named after Neil Armstrong, Neil Gaiman, Neil Diamond and Bernadette's father.

With two kids, Howard becomes an attentive, loving dad, the opposite of what he had. He also learns he has a half brother, Josh, from his father's other family, and juggles diapers, engineering and the gyroscope he built with Leonard and Sheldon.

In the final season, Howard and Bernadette deal with the pressure of raising two small kids while keeping their careers. He follows Sheldon and Amy's Nobel race up close and flies to Stockholm with the gang for the ceremony.

From the audience, he hears Sheldon set his speech aside and thank his friends as his family. The series ends with Howard and Bernadette back in apartment 4A, eating with everyone, like they did from the start.

Simon Helberg plays Howard, and his mother was voiced by Carol Ann Susi, who was never fully shown on screen. The actress's death in 2014 led the show to say goodbye to the character. On Young Sheldon, a young Howard is played by Ethan Reed Stern.