As the friend who is “less” smart because he doesn’t have a doctorate, we set out to see what Howard’s IQ could be.
Howard Wolowitz (played by Simon Helberg) is often mocked by his group of brilliant scientist friends for lacking a Ph.D. An engineer who has also been to space, there is no doubt about the fact that Howard is pretty much a genius. And although high IQs don’t necessarily translate into success or happiness in real life, we find the characters in ‘The Big Bang Theory’ always bragging about their IQs! They also often consider Howard as being “lesser” than others because he isn’t a doctor. But is he less intelligent? Since IQs are such a big deal on the show, we thought we’d see how Howard fared up against his friends in terms of his IQ level.
Highlights —
- Is Howard really that brilliant?
- Here’s how Howard matches up with his friends
Is Howard really that brilliant?
Howard’s IQ could roughly come up to 150, which easily makes him much more intelligent than most people. He is a good engineer with a degree from MIT, an ex-astronaut, and clearly knows a lot about his field. He even builds entire robots for fun! However, he does make mistakes while going about his work, which makes us wonder if he really exercises practicality and basic sense.
Howard and Sheldon are often at loggerheads about who is smarter, and only because of his lack of a doctorate, Howard gets snubbed a lot. Howard even proves that he is just as clever as Sheldon when Sheldon begins teaching Howard a class at Caltech, but because of his lack of PhD, he falls behind.
Here’s how Howard matches up with his friends
Like we said before, IQs don’t matter much in reality. But they do form a kind of (limited) measuring scale for intelligence, used a lot throughout the 12 seasons of ‘The Big Bang Theory’. Now that we know Howard’s IQ, let’s see how he compares against his friends.
First up, his wife Bernadette, whose IQ could easily be around 160. What with her hard-earned Ph.D. degree in microbiology and career in developing drugs, Bernadette sure seems to be a smart cookie. Raj, Howard’s best friend, could easily have an IQ of 170 with his remarkable career as an astrophysicist. Raj works hard, seems to be sincere and passionate about his work, and his contributions in the field are deemed noteworthy.
One of the only characters whose IQ is mentioned in the series, Leonard has a solid IQ of 173. He is smart, has written many academic papers in his field, and even presented them in conferences. Another character whose IQ is directly referenced on the show is Sheldon, with an IQ of an impossible 187. A genius through and through, Sheldon attended college even before he came into his teens. He is so smart, and abstract and difficult concepts are so easy for him to understand, that he often assumes everyone else is on the same page as him.
Howard’s IQ is more than one core member of the gang: Penny, who didn’t go to college, and whose IQ could be about average, so around or less than 110. Arguably though, one could say that Penny is smarter than the whole lot of them because she has the basic skills to get by life: she is friendly, socially competent, and well-adjusted. No matter how high (or low?) Howard’s IQ is, he is still loved by fans for his goofiness and adorable social ineptitude!
