Walter Bishop (John Noble)In his heyday, Walter was a noted researcher and an endowed chair of Biochemistry at Harvard, conducting experiments in the basement of the university's Kresge building. But in 1991, an accident resulted in the death of one of his assistants, and Walter was charged with manslaughter. He was admitted to St. Claire's Psychiatric Institution, where he languished for 17 years before being released into the custody of his son, Peter, to assist FBI special agent Olivia Dunham with a Fringe Division case.As part of his agreement to assist them, Walter convinces the FBI to reopen his basement laboratory and secure a number of implements to assist with his research. The laboratory is Walter's base of operations and, in many ways, his safe space where he continues his theoretical research and, from time to time, whips up the occasional dessert. Although Walter's genius is beyond parallel, his tenuous grasp on reality keeps Olivia, Peter and Astrid on their toes.Background: Born in Cambridge in 1946, Walter Bishop is a Harvard University graduate and conducted his postgraduate study at Oxford and MIT. He had a reputation of being one of the most brilliant scientific minds of his time, and has a recorded IQ of 196. From the 1970s until the fateful incident in 1991, Walter and his research partner and best friend William Bell spearheaded deep research in a variety of fields, including genetic engineering, biological weaponry and quantum physics. Bell would go on to found the multi-billion-dollar corporation known as Massive Dynamic.