Charlie Eppes

Backstory

According to Eppes' father, he could multiply four-digit numbers mentally at age three and at the age of four required special teachers. In the second grade, he attempted to find a 70-digit narcissistic number in base 12—Eppes has described himself as "quixotic" in elementary school. A prodigy, he attended Princeton University at the age of 13 after graduating from high school at the same time as his brother who is five years his senior ("Soft Target"), and took Professor Lawrence Fleinhardt's quantum physics course in his first year. They became fast friends, with Fleinhardt establishing his academic connections. Eppes published his first mathematical treatise at the age of 14 (in the American Journal of Mathematics) and graduated at the age of 16. In fact, he was the youngest person to ever write a paper of importance.

It was his paper on the Eppes Convergence, which concerned asymptotics of Hermitian random matrices, that made him a star in his field. Following a seminar that heavily criticized this seminal piece many years after its initial publication, Charlie realized that his work with the FBI has prevented him from doing research significant to other mathematicians and now hopes to spend decades on cognitive emergence theory ("the mathematics of the brain") to rectify this certain inequity, which has delighted Fleinhardt. Although he was a child prodigy, Charlie now laments the fact that his best years in his research will never come ahead of schedule again.

Eppes is a multiple Ph.D. ("Decoy Effect"), a recipient of the Milton Prize and a nominee for the Fields Medal. Following his five-year research on random matrices, Charlie worked on sequences with orthogonal symmetry. He has also provided insights for possibly solving the P vs. NP problem and published works on H-infinity control of nonlinear systems and computational fluid dynamics, while his current research is in cognitive emergence theory. He has presented seminars on harmonic analysis and the zeros of random orthogonal polynomials and given lectures on group theory and Kac–Moody algebras. Eppes has taught courses on calculus, chaos theory, fluid dynamics, game theory and probability at CalSci in addition to giving guest lectures on applied probability. The lecture in which he converted the classroom into a miniature casino for analyzing probabilities is considered an "Eppes Classic". Also, Eppes has taken over Fleinhardt's computational physics class when he was asked to do so, and has given a joint lecture on circular motion and the Coriolis effect with Fleinhardt. Professor Otto Bahnoff took over Eppes' mathematical physics grad seminar on the day he got married.

Characterization

Charlie has wild curly hair, is wary of people, and frequently enthralled with objects and patterns. According to Krumholtz, Charlie wants to understand how the world works. His father has said Charlie is easily fascinated, possesses a big heart and is thorough, but he misses certain things completely. Meanwhile, Larry observed that he is "a talented theoretician with an ego problem" and a student once described him as fast-talking and disorganized, to the agreement of Larry. Fleinhardt also accurately noticed that his colleague has a high standard of guilt and is a pragmatist. Charlie is rather fond of providing excessive explanations (e.g., his discussion of Occam's razor) and reducing complex phenomena to intuitively obvious situations through practical analogies that are quite unlike Larry's metaphysical musings and cosmic metaphors. (These analogies are known as "audience visions" or, as friend Megan Reeves calls them, "those cute little analogies.") While contemplating, his antics and mannerisms may even disconcert more conventional thinkers. Wearing his headset, Dr. Eppes has an intense focusing ability as he voraciously writes equations, often covering several chalkboards with a staccato clacking and the aid of a red chalk holder. Nevertheless, if his line of thought is interrupted during a tense moment, as one of restricted foresight, he can become very disgruntled. Further, when deeply concentrating on a particular problem, it seems Charlie is unable to provide insights to other topics for the sake that they are simply needed or wanted—he has to write what is in his head. Like his brother Don, he is characteristically stubborn and obsessive ("one part exuberance, two parts obsession"), especially when it comes to work, but he's rather naïve when it comes to human behavior. The latter often interferes with his FBI work and, thus, is the cause of much distress for him at times.

He is extremely talented in chess, as it requires both his father and brother to play against him and a distraction to defeat him. Charlie also has a vast understanding of theoretical physics, often assisting Larry with his multi-dimensional supergravity theory and papers on gravity waves, and biology, extending to knowledge of ciliate protozoa and the spread of infectious diseases. While brilliant in some areas, he is lacking in others. Dr. Fleinhardt has stated that it is a good thing he went into applied mathematics as opposed to engineering, as machines malfunction in his presence, though he was able to take apart and rebuild his father's cell phone to analyze its GPS transceiver. He is apparently a bad speller (e.g., he misspells "anomaly" and "conceited") and does not know the meaning of "defenestration" (for which Larry chastises him stating that the idealization is to be a Renaissance man and that even math and physics majors had to have a course on English). Thus, his father likes playing Scrabble with him.

Evolution over the series

The episode "Uncertainty Principle" is significant for the backstory it gives on the familial relationships, particularly Charlie's difficulty in dealing with his mother's death from cancer. While it's unclear how Don reacted, Charlie spent the last three months of his mother's life isolated in the garage, incessantly working on one of the Millennium Prize Problems, specifically P vs NP; it's a point of contention between the brothers. Also, Charlie doesn't think Don understood what he went through during their school years, especially how he was treated as "Don's brainiac little brother" by his peers in high school, and how he often left him to his own resources as a child, though he was not as inept as Don had reasoned. However, Charlie's relationship with Don remains strong, as he has begun to increasingly fear for his brother's safety on the job and still looks to his older brother for acceptance. Charlie and his father worry about Don committing to relationships, and for a time, fear that he had been cheating on Robin Brooks. Ironically, Charlie has similar problems with women himself. After a couple dozen murder cases, Charlie is somewhat jaded and world-weary like his brother. FBI agent David Sinclair of Don's team even comments that he has never seen two brothers so similar and yet so different. In "The Janus List", the brothers seem to take on each other's tendencies a bit. Though, in season five, Charlie is dismayed that Don does not reveal to him his newfound religious faith.

In "Prime Suspect," Charlie purchases the beautiful Craftsman family home from his father, who continues to live with him. Now 30 years old, Charlie wants to be responsible and take care of his father but still believes that much of the pressures involving their dad has been put on his shoulders as Don doesn't seem to have enough time. Realizing this, Alan sets his sights on moving out to accomplish things on his own, with Charlie seemingly supporting the idea, but has since chosen to stay as he favors his son's company. Recently, Charlie is bothered by his father trying to impose his will on him with maintaining the house, as he is a full tenured professor at one of the most prestigious institutions in the country working on "life-altering" mathematics, i.e., in solving crimes. Alan just wants him to be responsible and not end up like Larry, though Mr. Eppes respects Fleinhardt. Even he has thought of this possibility and decides to do more around the home. After Charlie compares his own situation to that of Einstein his father looks into information on the physicist and understands his son's predicament. Charlie also feels guilty about the amount of time his parents, particularly his mother, who always was attuned to his way of thinking, spent with him as a child; he even asks his mother (JoBeth Williams) in a dream if she regrets the time away from Don and Alan because of the special attention he needed growing up.

Creation

Long intrigued by mathematicians and scientists, creators Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci created a show with one as the protagonist. Inspiration for Charlie came specifically from Richard Feynman. Finding the actor who would portray Charlie would be a challenge. Over one hundred actors auditioned for the role of Charlie Eppes. One of the actors was David Krumholtz, who later admitted in an interview with TVGuide.com and in an interview with USA Weekend's Lorrie Lynch to failing math in high school. Krumholtz was cast as Charlie because of his ability to make math sound natural.

To prepare for his role of Charlie Eppes, Krumholtz spent some time at Caltech talking to professors and walking the Caltech campus, attempting to understand both the basics of the math and the mathematician's mind. He even spoke with Dr. Tony Chan of UCLA about mathematicians’ work while filming the first pilot. Math consultants helped Krumholtz understand the basics of the equations on the show. Early on, Professor Rick Wilson's graduate student, David Grynkiewicz, showed Krumholtz how to write his own equations and even filled in for his hand in several episodes. Krumholtz later frequently wrote the equations himself.

Krumholtz memorized the pages of mathematical equations and concepts that are a part of the script. When doing scenes involving audience-visions, Krumholtz preferred to recite his lines as the cameras were rolling; producers went along with this because they reasoned that if the cameras weren't rolling, the lines wouldn't make it into the show. (Audience visions are Charlie's visually-aided explanations of the mathematics involved in a case.)

Reception

Early reception of Charlie varied according to the audience in question. Due to television production's traditional approach of utilizing only two worlds for filming, production staff initially opposed the idea of Charlie being a college professor. Some even unsuccessfully suggested to Heuton and Falacci that Charlie should be working with the FBI full-time as an employee.

When the pilot was previewed, the reception was more positive. CBS executive Nina Tassler liked Charlie. The focus group that watched the original pilot for Numb3rs loved him.

When Numb3rs was previewed for the TV critics, the reception was different. Melanie McFarland, TV critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, stated that Charlie was not original as of the Pilot. According to Lauren Aaronson of Popular Science, Charlie's expertise seems a little bit incredible. Robert Bianco of USA Today, however, called Krumholtz, as Charlie, "appealing". Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life Magazine stated that Krumholtz, as Charlie, "stands out".

Since the early days of the series, the character of Charlie Eppes has become more widely accepted. Krumholtz appeared at the 2005 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) convention in Anaheim. Since then, Krumholtz receives cheers when he attends math conventions. In a public service announcement, Krumholtz congratulated the Federal Bureau of Investigation on their 100th anniversary. Charlie was one of the first geeks on primetime television who paved the way for other shows starring geeks such as Bones, Chuck and The Big Bang Theory. Charlie was a runner-up in the category of "Sexiest Brainiac" in TV Guide's poll in 2007.

CharlieVision

CharlieVision (as labeled by the show's creators) is the mode in which Charlie's insights are displayed on-screen. It consists of fast-paced visions or cutscenes often characterized by false-color images that integrate his analogies and mathematical models, usually followed by him rushing off to tell Don about his new insights. 'CharlieVision' is not to be confused with "audience visions," in which Charlie's voice uses an analogy to simplify a mathematical concept while corresponding images are flashed on screen. Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, executive producers for Numb3rs, designed the specifics of the Charlie-visions, such as the ash yellow color that appears on-screen when Charlie suddenly becomes inspired.