Hari Seldon

The novel's protagonist, Hari Seldon, is a mathematician from an obscure "Outworld," Helicon, who travels to the center of the Galactic Universe, Trantor, to deliver a theoretical paper on psychohistory. Background information on Seldon is sparse: he is born in the same year as the Emperor Cleon I (11,988 G.E.), he is adept in both mathematics and the manual arts ("twisting"), but knows little history. He has had a relationship with a woman who cannot accept his attachment to mathematics, and continues to feel the pain of the breakup. He is thirty-two years old at the time of the novel, 1.73 mm. (five toof, seven inches) tall, dark-haired, smooth-faced, cheerful, and dressed unmistakenly as a provincial-hardly the white-haired "demigod" confinded to a wheelchair, as he is most remembered once he achieves fame. The Encyclopedia Galactica says Seldon's wife's name is forgotten, along with the circumstances under which they...