Sheldon Cooper

Sheldon Lee Cooper, Ph.D., Sc.D., is a fictional character in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon, portrayed by actors Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory and Iain Armitage in Young Sheldon (with Parsons as the latter series' narrator). For his portrayal, Parsons has won four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a TCA Award, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. The character's childhood is the focus of Young Sheldon; the series' first season is set in 1989 when 9-year-old prodigy Sheldon has skipped ahead five grades, to start high school alongside his older brother. Sheldon is a senior theoretical physicist at Caltech and for the first ten seasons of The Big Bang Theory, shares an apartment with his colleague and best friend, Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki). In season 10, Sheldon moves across the hall with his fiancée Amy, in the former apartment of Leonard's wife Penny. He is a former child prodigy with genius-level IQ, but displays an almost total lack of social skills, a tenuous understanding of humor, and difficulty recognizing irony and sarcasm in other people, although he himself often employs them. He exhibits highly idiosyncratic behavior and a general lack of humility or empathy. He also lacks toleration. These characteristics provide the majority of the humor involving him, which has caused him to be described as the show's breakout character. Some viewers have asserted that Sheldon's personality is consistent with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and asexualit