- Social Security number 563-86-9801
- Department of Defense Umbra top-secret clearance 004-002-02-016.
- Born August 8, 1953
- Occupation: Scientist, Time traveler
- Spouse: Donna Eleese
- Children: Samantha Josephine “Sammy Jo” Fuller
- Relatives: Jonathan Beckett (father; deceased), Thelma Beckett (mother), Tom Beckett (brother), Katie Beckett (sister)
“Theorizing that one could time-travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert, to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished… He awoke to find himself in the past , suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram, that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next Leap will be the Leap home.”
Sam grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Elk Ridge, Indiana. As a child, he had two cats, named Donner and Blitzen, but never had a dog. He could read at age 2, do advanced calculus in his head at 5, went to MIT at age 15 (maybe 17), graduating 2 years later, and has 6 doctorates including music, medicine, quantum physics, and ancient languages, but NOT psychiatry or law.
He speaks 7 modern languages including English, Japanese, French, Spanish and German, but not Italian or Hebrew and 4 dead ones including reading Egyptian hieroglyphics. He has a Nobel Prize, field unspecified, but probably for physics. For this, Time magazine called him “The next Einstein”.
He played the piano at Carnegie Hall at 19, plays guitar, is a good dancer, and sings tenor (his favourite song is John Lennon’s “Imagine”). He has a photographic memory, can cook, and likes dry or light beer and microwave popcorn. Sam also knows several kinds of martial arts and has been afraid of heights since he was 9 years old. He was originally engaged once, but was stood up at the altar.
An accident occurred during a leap in the middle of a lightning storm which caused Sam and Al to temporarily change places. At this time, he discovered he was NOT stood up at the altar and that he was in fact married to his greatest love, Dr. Donna Eleese. This was no doubt due to events in a prior leap where he was able to alter her life in such a way that she was able to commit to marriage with him.
Sam’s older brother Tom, a good athlete, All-State basketball player, Annapolis grad and Navy SEAL (who convinced Sam to go to MIT) died in Vietnam, on April 8, 1970. However, Sam managed to save him on one leap. Sam’s dad, John Samuel Beckett, died in 1974 (or maybe 1972, or maybe 1973) of a heart attack. He has one sister named Katie (Katherine), born during a flood in 1957, whose first husband was an abusive alcoholic named Chuck (Unless maybe Sam convinced her not to marry him. Who knows?). Now she’s married to a Navy officer, Lt. Jim Bonnick, and lives in Hawaii with their mom, Thelma Louise Beckett.