This Is The Real Scientist Behind The Big Bang Theory

There is some serious brainpower between the characters in the popular television series "The Big Bang Theory." Starring Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Mayim Bialik, and Kunal Nayyar, "The Big Bang Theory" has 12 seasons and over 270 episodes full of pop culture references, nerdy shenanigans, and awkward social interactions (via IMDb). The Bazinga-yelling main character of the show, Sheldon Cooper (Parsons), has a photographic memory and a job as a theoretical physicist, where he spends most of his time researching such heavy subjects as string theory and quantum mechanics.

However, Sheldon isn't the only one who boasts impressive academic knowledge in "The Big Bang Theory." Leonard Hofstadter (Galecki) is an experimental physicist, which involves recreating different scenarios inside a laboratory setting in order to examine the results (via Science). Howard Wolowitz (Helberg) is an aerospace engineer who eventually is sent to space as a payload specialist, while Raj Koothrappali (Nayyar) is a particle astrophysicist, which is a scientist that studies cosmic principles like gravitational waves and theoretical dark matter (via UK Research and Innovation).

With so many incredibly dense subjects featured on "The Big Bang Theory," it makes perfect sense why they would have an in-house scientist to help advise.

"The Big Bang Theory" goes pretty far into incredibly brainy information and advanced theories. As it turns out, all of that information is accurate, fact-checked, and presented in a true manner thanks to the likes of David Saltzberg, a real-life UCLA physics professor. 

In an interview with NPR, Saltzberg said of his tenure on the hit series, "This has a lot more impact than anything I will ever do. It's hard to fathom, when you think about 20 million viewers on the first showing — and that doesn't include other countries and reruns. I'm happy if a paper I write gets read by a dozen people." According to that same interview, Saltzberg's other function on the show, besides making sure all of the science is correct, was to fill in the appropriate information within the script and on the whiteboards. The whiteboards themselves have an incredible amount of detail when it comes to current scientific understanding, and Saltzberg would often reference real-life theoretical works, much to the delight of actual physicists familiar with the subjects.

When he's not working on shows like "The Big Bang Theory," Saltzberg works with proton colliders, researches neutrinos, and teaches physics classes that range from introductory courses to classes aimed at graduate students at the University of California's Los Angeles campus (via UCLA). Because of Saltzberg's work on "The Big Bang Theory," the show is as scientifically correct as it possibly can be.