Raj Koothrappali
fictional character on the television series The Big Bang Theory
Rajesh Ramayan "Raj" Koothrappali, Ph.D. is a fictional character and one of the protagonists of the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by British-Indian actor Kunal Nayyar. He is one of four main male characters in the show to appear in every episode of The Big Bang Theory, alongside Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter and Howard Wolowitz. Raj is based on a computer programmer that the show's co-creator, Bill Prady, knew when he was a programmer.
Character biography
In the series, Raj is Howard's best friend. They have what Nayyar calls a "bromance".
Raj works as an astrophysicist in the Physics Department at Caltech. It was revealed in "The Monster Isolation" that Raj did at least part of his higher education at the University of Cambridge, where he discovered his interest in astrophysics.
He had selective mutism, which did not allow him to talk to women outside of his family unless he was under the influence of alcohol (or medication), until the season 6 finale.
Rajesh, who is normally called Raj or just by his surname Koothrappali, is from New Delhi, India. However, he despises Indian food, and his knowledge about Indian culture and Hinduism is often rebuked by Sheldon, who is seen to speak better Hindi than him (although this is contradicted by earlier episodes, in which Raj is shown speaking Hindi to the incomprehension of his friends, Sheldon included).
The public source identifies “Raj Koothrappali” as fictional character on the television series The Big Bang Theory. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Koothrappali, fictional and character.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raj Koothrappali” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.