| Larry Fleinhardt |
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Professor of Physics Played by: Peter MacNicol  Full Name: Lawrence FleinhardtAddress: Unknown Birthdate: Unknown Early Life: Larry has always been fascinated with the stars. He has his first telescope at age three, is the president of the rocket club in the fifth grade and works as a docent at his local planetarium while in junior high school; he even plays a lot of Space Invaders as a child. His favorite comic book character is Galactus from the Fantastic Four seeing the character as a necessary force. Throughout his life he keeps a diary in the form of a quipu. Larry graduates college at the age of nineteen and is a grad student near Atlantic City in 1984 where he gambles heavily in a bid to prove the power of mathematics. While in grad school he tries to go a whole year without electricity in order to impress a girl, Sandra Darwinkle. Larry's father is a painter and wants Larry to follow as an artist as well. Larry does apply to an art school, but never takes classes. He is a technically accomplished artist and has made several drawings of famous paintings. Physics Career: Larry worked for four years on a DARPA funded project to develop a new space telescope, he quits when the design is used instead as part of the star wars missile defense project. Larry has been teaching for twenty years, though his students find him boring and intellectually inaccessible. He meets a young Charlie Eppes when he is teaching and Charlie is a student at Princeton University. He is a coach for an intramural basketball team at CalSci, however he turns in his whistle as he easily loses his temper during competition. He is working on an eleven dimension super-gravity theory and wants to win a Nobel Prize when it is complete. He suffers a set back in late 2006 when the theory is completely dismantled by another physicist. He is handicapped in needing Charlie to help him with the math involved as he doesn’t work the equations himself. Larry has won the Newton Lacey Pierce Award from the American Astronomy Society. In 2005, Larry started an experiment of only eating white food to test super symmetry and in late 2006 is still on his white food only diet. After his return from space in early 2007, Larry considers giving up his white food experiment; he also decides to spend time at a monastery in Altadena "exploring the universe of his mind". Late summer of 2007, Larry is still at the monastery and is no longer on his white food only diet; he has learned the art of meditation. Larry is having problems adjusting to life back on Earth. He mentions wanting to find and contemplate silence but he can't seem to find it as he keeps thinking of so many other things. As of late 2007, Larry has agreed to teach a seminar at CalSci and he has been offered the chance to help find the "God Particle". In early 2008 Larry accepts the offer to help find Higgs boson and asks Amita to be his computational partner; they spend roughly twenty hours a week working on the project. He has a crisis of faith wondering if he is a hypocrite to be searching for something he may not want to find. Charlie points out to him the problem isn't that Larry wouldn't find the Higgs-Boson, but that he would and his feelings would be the same as his trip to the ISS. The question becomes moot in early 2009 when Larry's Higgs research is stopped due to problems at CERN. By late 2009, though Larry starts to withdraw from all of his research, he removes his application to work at CERN, he also drops all of his classes. Charlie accuses him of running away, and Larry does not dispute him. Charlie and Amita find Larry's super gravity work written out on the walls of the steam tunnels under CalSci along with a Hindi sign that Amita thinks means Larry is leaving all of his physics work in Charlie's care. He also regularly competes in the Physics Department Paper Airplane contest, and food fights, and is the five time Texas Hold 'Em champion at the CalSci Faculty Tournament. He dreams of one day going into space. This dream is realized in December 2006, when Larry is moved up from alternate to prime payload specialist on a mission to the International Space Station. During his six month stay, Larry uses his knowledge of cosmic background microwaves to study the effect it has on satellites. In early 2009, Charlie, Amita and Larry decide to start a once an month "think tank" to toss around interesting ideas. After some initial hesitation, Charlie asks Alan to join the group. The group elects Amita as team leader and the group will consult with JPL on the next planetary rover. Larry believes in the existence of alien races and the possibility of psychic ability. Larry has been to numerous conferences throughout his career, including one in Ethiopia. However for a string theory conference in Minneapolis, Larry wasn't sure where he needed to be. In late 2006, Larry has a paper on Zero Point Energy and Quantum Cosmology published in Physics Weekly. In early 2009, Larry states he holds the Walter T Merrick chair in Theoretical Physics at CalSci. Personal Life: In late 2005 Larry sells his personally restored 1877 Victorian home. However he has not found anything else. He is homeless by choice feeling a permanent address "constrains one's intellectual vistas". Charie becomes concerned about Larry's living arrangement when he discovers Larry has been living in the steam tunnels under the school. Charlie offers Larry space at the family home but Larry refuses on the grounds the Craftsman only has one tub, and he uses a tub frequently to think. Larry eventually reveals this change was in anticipation of the NASA mission, but didn't want to tell anyone about his accomplishment as it is questionable if he gets chosen. He knows Rhonda Pickford had a crush on him in the fifth grade. He was also romantically involved with Jane Karellen, his boss during his time with DARPA. In 2004 he starts going on regular hikes with Laurel Wilson, a professor of Philosophy of Science and has had intimate relations with her in 2005; Larry describes it as an untwinable event. He has recently started thinking about marriage and family. He mentions having at least one lunch with Megan Reeves and they have their first date at an Ethiopian restaurant in April 2006. In late 2006, Larry and Megan have gone out on several dates, but Larry is feeling the relationship is affecting his ability to work. He needs some structure to their relationship and the two of them work out a dating schedule. He tells Megan he is spending time at a monastery after returning from the ISS by leaving a note "in beautiful calligraphy" under her door. By late 2007, he and Megan are reconnecting after his time on the ISS. Larry feels even though she will be living in Washington, his relationship with Megan will continue. In early 2009, Larry is interested in Lorna Ludlow, a biology professor at CalSci researching avian flu. Larry is mum as to whether he is actually planning to date Lorna, however he is considering becoming vegetarian, like Lorna; he says while he sorts out his feelings on animals in general. By late 2009, Larry has shed all of his responsibilities at Cal-Sci and in his personal life and decides to leave the modern, technological world behind. He buys plane tickets to Greenland, Australia, Greece, Alaska, and Italy; in the end however he may end up buying a piece of land he finds on a road from LA to Las Vegas (he has all of the flights leave from Las Vegas so he doesn't have to say any goodbyes at home.) By early 2010, Larry is back and squatting in Charlie's garage. He spent his time, not at any of the destinations he mentioned, but on the Mojave Desert. He used teh time to think, watch the stars and talk to coyotes and discovers he is focusing all his time studying the past, seeing stars that may already be dead. Instead he decides to look to the future and he thinks he has a theory on what the future holds for the cosmos. He comes home to work out the kinks in the theory and test his conclusions. He states one of the things he missed most while living in the desert was the thrill of the chase with FBI cases. Larry has not talked about is family very often. His mother died years ago, and he has an Aunt Louise who, as of 2006, is still living in the LA area. He has not specified what kind of a relationship he has with his aunt, but mentions two dreams he has about her; one involving her stealing his internal organs and another where she is trying to eat his flesh. He also thinks she could tackle a bear and win. Larry has taken steps for his retirement investing in both Syntel (where he lost $175,000) and Google. Hobbies Likes/Dislikes: Larry is very good at air hockey, and will watch Don and Charlie play Frisbee golf. He also plays several retro video games including Asteroids and Tempest. He enjoys dancing. He prefers classic cars and owns at least two: a yellow one seen only in the Pilot and a 1934 Model A he purchases in 2005. He is a member of a classic car club and admits to Charlie his biggest rival is Al McNabb, a fellow member of the club who covets Larry's 1934 Ford. He is a member of the North American Sundial Society. Larry likes the band The White Stripes, Mel Torme and the Three Tenors. He is an avid reader, among his favorite authors is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He also reads comic books including The Green Lantern and The Fantastic Four. He also likes jazz, is a big fan of Star Trek and enjoys magic and illusions. He does not own a cell phone considering them "electronic leashes" and doesn't want to. He does buy a cell phone (with a Star Trek ring tone) when he starts getting calls from NASA. When he leaves NASA he also gets rid of the cell phone. However Don soon "shoves another one" at him so he can be reached during FBI cases. He does not eat red meat. He has a tendency to get sea-sick.
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 February 2010 ) |
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