Walter White is a talented chemist who, as a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, contributed to research on proton radiography that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After graduate school, Walter founded the firm Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott Schwartz, his former classmate and close friend. Around this time, Walter dated his lab assistant, Gretchen. However, he abruptly left both Gretchen and Gray Matter Technologies, selling his financial interest in the company for $5,000. Gretchen and Elliott later married and made a fortune, over which Walter secretly harbors animosity.
At the age of 50, Walt works as a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, providing instruction to uninterested and disrespectful students. The job pays so poorly that he is forced to take a second job at a car wash, which proves particularly humiliating when he must clean the cars of his own students. Walter is married to Skyler White; they have a teenage son named Walter Jr., who has cerebral palsy. Skyler is also pregnant with their second child, Holly, who is born at the end of season two. Walt's other family includes Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader, and her husband, Hank, who is an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.