Ricardo "Richard" Alpert is a fictional character played by Nestor Carbonell in the American ABC television series Lost. Alpert is introduced in a flashback of the character Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), where he claims to be a doctor for a bioscience company called Mittelos Bioscience; he is later revealed to be a member of a native island faction called the Others, where he plays a role in the group's hierarchy that has been compared to that of the Panchen Lama in Buddhism by the series' producers. A major facet of the character is his seeming agelessness; he has been seen with a similar physical appearance both in the show's present events in the mid-2000s as well as flashbacks dating as far back as the late-1860s. Richard becomes mortal at the end of the series.