Meeting a Real Young Sheldon Cooper
My shocking first impression of an 8-year-old science wiz
Many people may wonder where the inspiration for the character of Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory” comes from. Was there a real-life person behind the make-believe Sheldon? Bill Prady, the co-creator of “The Big Bang Theory”, cleared up any confusion by saying that the inspiration was from a colleague he had prior to becoming a TV writer in Hollywood.
Once upon a time Prady was a computer programmer and worked with guys who were “amazingly bright and had a little trouble fitting into the world.”
Prady said the following about one of his human calculator co-workers:
“If you programmed in Z80 assembly you had to convert from decimal to hexadecimal and you could either grab the calculator or you could shout it to this guy and he would be faster.”
As brilliant as he was, when it came to human interaction, Prady describes how the programmer was lost.
“He couldn’t calculate a tip at a restaurant because the formula for a tip is 15–20% depending upon the quality of the service and he couldn’t put a numeric value on the service. It was human.”
The inability to recognize social cues similarities between the actual person and the…
