I have to say that I've only caught snippets of the show on a plane, but the description of the theoretical physicist character is in line with my experiences with physicists (undergrad and grad). It sounds more like a faithful description of the culture of physicists (particularly theoretical physicists) without the need to bring in Asperger's. As an engineer with a PhD and who has had many close friends who were physicists, I particularly like the character belitlling of engineers. That's classic physics culture (until they try to use the statistical mechanics to figure out the heat duty of a heat exchanger). Now maybe most theoretical physicists are aspies, but methinks the author is reading too much into the character.

I have to agree. I love the show and it never even even occurred to me that something might be wrong with Sheldon. Granted, he has a big ego and is a bit stunted socially, but these traits are not uncommon in the academic world. I just find it tiring that everything has to be labeled nowadays. These are just four geeky guys with their idiosyncrasies.

I know physicists and it's true -- they may not all be Sheldons, but they totally understand the Sheldons among them. It's just accepted behavior. If the first time your friend drove to your house, he timed how many minutes it took to drive there and expects to drive that many minutes every time he drives to your house, and one day he shows up at your door recovering from a serious tantrum because he ran into traffic and it took him ten minutes longer to get there, you understand.

None of them call themselves "aspies" and they'd die if their mothers were discussing their habits on internet message boards, or demanding their children be classified as neurological cases. But the physicists I know are boomers. There was no such thing as "an aspie" when they were growing up, so it didn't occur to them that their mothers should be fighting an imaginary battle to define their kids and get the rest of the world to understand them.