Beverly Hofstadter is Leonard's mother. She is an M.D. and a Ph. D and is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author. She viewed raising Leonard as a kind of detached social study and gave him very little maternal love or approval. As a result, he has a strained relationship with her. She immediately analyzes his friends when she meets them, but takes quickly to Sheldon, whose cool, calculating persona is similar to her own. Leonard comes to dread his mother's closeness with his roommate.