Larry Fleinhardt, Ph.D., is a fictional character in the CBS crime drama Numb3rs, played by Peter MacNicol. He is the best friend and colleague of Charlie Eppes. Dr. Lawrence Fleinhardt holds the Walter T. Merrick Chair of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Science, CalSci (a university based on Caltech and located in Los Angeles in the Numb3rs universe). He is portrayed as a brilliant theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who researches supersymmetry, string theory, 11-dimensional supergravity theory, doubly special relativity, black holes, Ly-alpha emitters, the cosmic microwave background, 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 nonvanishing harmonic spinor and, independent of Charlie, published a work of genius entitled Zero Point Energy and Quantum Cosmology, which could provide insight into the cosmological constant problem (episode 3x4, "The Mole"). Backstory Larry Fleinhardt has always been fascinated with the stars. He had his first telescope at age three, was the president of the rocket club in the fifth grade, and worked as a docent at his local planetarium while in junior high school. Once a remarkable student comparable to Charlie, Larry graduated from college at the early age of 19. However, Fleinhardt had an addiction with card counting during his years as an undergraduate, 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; this was discussed in "Double Down", an episode that focused on a gambling ring. He wanted to prove the power of mathematics. Dr. Fleinhardt has been teaching for 20 years and Eppes attended his classes at Princeton University, first taking his quantum physics class at the age of 13. Charlie's father, Alan Eppes, said that all the family heard about that first year was Professor Fleinhardt. Dr. Fleinhardt has worked on building a space telescope for DARPA in the past, but it was weaponized against his wishes as part of the star wars missile defense project. 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