The Rosie Project characters

Appears from the start

A genetics professor in Melbourne who organizes his life through schedules, rules, and carefully optimized routines. Social situations that depend on implication or convention often puzzle him, but he is observant, principled, and capable of sustained loyalty. Wanting a partner, he designs a detailed questionnaire to screen applicants for what he calls the Wife Project.

Appears from the start

Don's colleague and closest male friend, a psychology professor whose social ease and experience with dating make him Don's informal adviser. He is married to Claudia but speaks freely about his attraction to other women.

Appears from the start

Gene's wife, a clinical psychologist and one of Don's few close friends. She gives Don more patient and emotionally perceptive advice than Gene does, and she questions whether a questionnaire can identify the person with whom he might build a life.

Appears from the start

An elderly woman whose friendship with Don helped him understand that companionship does not depend on age or conventional compatibility. Her death before the main action remains an important influence on his decision to seek a partner.

First appears in chapter 4

A graduate student who comes to Don seeking help with a genetics question. Direct, spontaneous, and willing to challenge his rules, she fails many of the criteria in his partner questionnaire. She wants to identify her biological father from among the medical students who knew her late mother.

First appears in chapter 6

Rosie's father, who raised her after her mother's death. He and Rosie have a strained relationship, and her belief that another man fathered her has made him both a parent and a candidate for elimination in Don's genetic investigation.

First appears in chapter 13

A woman selected by Don's questionnaire as an unusually promising Wife Project candidate. Their arranged date demonstrates the difference between compatibility on paper and the less measurable connection Don is beginning to experience elsewhere.

First appears in chapter 27

An academic Don meets during a genetics conference in New York. Intelligent and professionally compatible with him, she represents an attractive life that would satisfy many of his stated requirements without resolving his feelings about Rosie.