Hari Seldon is the intellectual hero of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series.

Using psychohistory, Seldon found the right time and place to set up a new society, one that would replace the collapsing Galactic Empire by sheer force of social pressure, over a thousand-year time span. The Foundation originally named Terminus is a planet entirely populated by scientists and their families. The planet was originally occupied to create the Encyclopedia Galactica, a vast compilation of the knowledge of a dying galactic empire.

He began his career studying psychology under Alurin. He became tired of it when he found there were no facilities on Terminus to pursue it, so went into politics instead.

He controlled the editorial policies of The Terminus City Journal, a newspaper, using it as a way to influence trends and people. He eventually was elected Mayor of Terminus. Despite the office's lack of official power, governing authority under the Foundation's charter being vested in the Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia, Hardin had a substantial influence on the Foundation's foreign relations.

Hardin participates in the meeting of Anselm haut Rodric, an envoy from Anacreon, with Dr Lewis Pirenne, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Shortly after, Lord Dorwin visits on behalf of the Empire. Lord Dorwin effectively promises no support for the Foundation, and meanwhile, concludes treaties with Anacreon, Smyrno and the other surrounding systems, that give them a large amount of autonomy. Hardin can see this is leaving Terminus without any military support and at the mercy of the surrounding systems. Hari Seldon's first appearance in the time vault gives Hardin the clue he needs to solve the crisis. He engineers a bloodless coup leaving him in complete control of Terminus and thus of the Foundation.

Hardin plays Anacreon against its neighbors by pointing out that allowing Anacreon to control the Foundation will render it militarily invincible. The other kingdoms force Anacreon to leave Terminus as an independent self-governing planet. Then, Hardin agrees to share the Foundation's vital scientific knowledge with the kingdoms, but under the guise of a religion - "Scientism" - which the Foundation controls. In this way, he steers the Foundation through the first crisis, and consolidates his own power at the same time.

After a period of 30 years or so, another crisis appears when the Kingdom of Anacreon under Prince Regent Wienis, the power behind the throne of the soon to be King Lepold I. He attempts to become the dominant power amongst the local systems by building up their battle fleet, and attacking the Foundation directly. Unfortunately, they have had to adopt the religion-of-science as a way to get working spaceships, which unwittingly places them in Hardin's power. Hardin has become effectively Head Priest of the religion. When Wienis takes him hostage on a visit, and attempts to take Terminus by force, Hardin diffuses the threat by using this religion against him, placing an interdict on the home planet of the Kingdom. Thus all technology on the planet and in the fleet is disabled and the destruction of the Foundation averted.

He is portrayed as a hero to The Foundation, and goes down as one of the most well-known characters in the series

She is born 11, 5, 362FE and dies 1, 7, 443FE. Her father is Toran Darell II and she is the grand-daughter of Toran and Bayta Darell and is very proud of the fact, writing a biography of Bayta in later life. She goes on to become a famous romantic novelist, writing the books Unkeyed Memories and Time and Time and Over about Kalganian society of the early interregnum. She was originally named Arcadia after her great-grandmother

She is a rather precocious child who lives on Terminus. She learns about a conspiracy between her father, Homir Munn, Pelleas Anthor and others to track down the members of the Second Foundation, so she stows away in a private spaceship owned by Munn to travel to Kalgan, where Munn hopes to uncover the Mule's records of the Second Foundation. Her father decides that it is wiser to pretend that this is a planned holiday with 'Uncle Homir', an old family friend, rather than send or take her back and draw attention to the conspiracy.

On Kalgan she is noticed by Lord Stettin, the local despot. Though she's only fourteen and shows no interest in sex (as distinct from romance), he views her as suitable wife to help consolidate his conquest of the Foundation. She is warned and helped to escape by Lady Callia, Lord Stettin's mistress, who is plausibly alarmed at being displaced. But as they part, Arkady notices a cold intelligence behind the apparent silliness of Lady Callia. She is being manipulated by the Second Foundation, and also works out where the Second Foundation must be.

Arkady decides to go to Trantor rather than Terminus. She has the good luck to run into Preem Palver and his wife, who live on Trantor. To them she gives the same story Lady Callia told, so they help her.

She persuades Palver that he could profitably supply food to Terminus. At the same times, he can take to her father a solution to the Second Foundation location mystery. This results in them completing their discovery of the Second Foundation.

In fact, however, they haven't. Arkady has been a tool of the Second Foundation from birth: it was possible to adjust her mind without a visible trace because she was a baby at the time. The Second Foundation sacrifice 50 of their people to make it seem that they no longer exist which they do in order to get history back on track.

Raych Seldon is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series. He is the adopted son of Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili, the primary characters in the first two books of the series. He lived in the slums of Billibotton, part of Dahl, on the world of Trantor.

He married Manella Dubanqua, an undercover police officer who helped prevent an assassination attempt on Hari Seldon. They had two daughters, Wanda and Bellis.

When Raych was twelve, Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili fleeing from Demerzel, ended up in the lower-class sector of Dahl. On the quest for psychohistory, Hari Seldon needed information about the rumoured single planet home of humanity, Earth. He learned that Mother Rita, a citizen of Billibotton, had information about Earth. Needing to find the way to Mother Rita, Seldon grabbed a hold of Raych, and after some negotiating, convinced Raych to show him the way to Mother Rita. Along the way, Raych showed them the basics of their society plus a few hiding places in the sewers. Raych was a trustworthy and helpful guide through Billibotton for Seldon and Dors. As things got rough for Hari and Dors in Billibotton and Dahl, the two were taken to the Wye sectore of Trantor, along with Raych. They were welcomed into Wye, and met Rashelle, the heir of the throne of Wye. Like the rulers before, Rashelle wanted Hari Seldon, and psychohistory. Like before, Hari said no to the offer. Therefore, the upstart mayor-to-be of Wye, Rashelle, sent soldiers to capture Seldon and Venabili, Raych tried to defend them and received an intensely painful shock from a neuronic whip to his shoulder. In gratitude, Seldon and Venabili adopted Raych.

Eight years later, when Seldon was 40 and Raych was 20, a dangerously popular public speaker named Jo-Jo Joranum threatened to overthrow the Empire. Seldon recognized that Joranum had artificial hair, having been in Mycogen, and realized Joranum was an outcast, deciding to use that fact later. He also ordered Raych to pretend to become a follower of Joranum and then betray him. Raych's plan was to tell Joranum that First Minister Eto Demerzel, otherwise known as Daneel Olivaw, was a robot. Joranum believed this, because a) Demerzel really was a robot and could not give any definite signs to the contrary, and b) Raych seemed to emit a kind of trustworthy aura. (This is believed to be a rudimentary form of the mentalic manipulation later shown in his daughter Wanda.) Joranum made Demerzel's roboticity a major part of his campaign, and though at first the idea was considered ridiculous, the public started to wonder, and demand for Demerzel to prove humanity grew. Finally, at one of Demerzel's speeches, someone asked "Are you a robot?" Demerzel laughed. He had carefully practiced it with the Seldons and Dors (who had married Hari by that time). No one believed that a robot could laugh, however, and Joranum was brought down with that failure and with Demerzel contacting Sunmaster Fourteen, leader of Mycogen, and "discovering" that Joranum was a sacrilegeous traitor to their culture. The Emperor Cleon, under Seldon's advice, exiled Joranum to where he claimed to come from, the backwater planet of Nishaya. Demerzel left his post as First Minister, and Seldon replaced him.

Ten years later, Joranum's right-hand-man, Namarti, had strung the old conspiracy back together with the new head of Wye, Gleb Andorin, and was trying once again to replace Cleon. Seldon again sent Raych out, in disguise this time, to pretend to become a Joranumite named Planchet. While working on his mission, Raych met a recruiter named Manella Dubanqua, who he fell in love with. Manella introduced him to Gleb Andorin, who accepted Raych (under the name of Planchet). Andorin brought Raych to Namarti. However, Namarti recognized Raych, and determined that he would be useful in the plot against Seldon.

The Chief Gardener would soon retire, and with it the current staff. New gardeners would be brought in, without many questions asked. Namarti sent in several Joranumites, including Raych. In a few weeks, Seldon, along with the new Chief Gardener Mandell Gruber, would walk out into the field and give a welcoming speech to the new recruits. One of them would then pull out a blaster and kill Hari Seldon.

At lunch right before the speech, Andorin ordered Raych to do the job. Raych, of course, said "No. I told you I'd do anything for the Joranumites, but not killing." Andorin, however, had drugged Raych's food rather heavily with desperance, which caused the recipient to feel despair and lack the ability to disobey an order. Andorin quickly subdued Raych and then it was off to the ceremony.

The plan almost worked. However, another of the gardeners, Manella Dubanqua, an undercover law-enforcement officer, shot Andorin before he could order Raych to kill his father. After everyone had fled the scene, however, there was one person unaccounted for. Mandell Gruber picked up the dead Andorin's blaster and killed Cleon I. Gruber didn't want to become Chief Gardener, because he liked the outdoors and Chief Gardener was an organizing job, and, lacking a sense of proportion, he decided to kill the Emperor to prevent it. Apparently he didn't realize he would be immediately executed.

After recovering from the desperance, Raych married Manella. They later had two children, Wanda and Bellis. When Seldon was 70, Raych served as his bodyguard. Six years later, Hari Seldon, now 76, was gradually losing fundings and opportunity for his Seldon Project at Streeling University. Raych decided to move to another non-waning university, Santanni University. However, Santanni is 9,000 parsecs away from Trantor, and Hari was stubborn and not willing to move to another university. Some years later Santanni rebelled against the empire, and a riot formed. Raych was killed by bombardment from rebels, not willing to miss out on a fight. Bellis and Manella, who were on a ship to Terminus, mysteriously disappeared and were never heard from again. (Rumor has it that Bellis is related to the Gaian character Bliss, short for Blissenobiarella.)

He is in reality the mastermind behind the plot to restore Hari Seldon's plan to its original course after the disruption by the Mule. This required meticulous planning, giving the Foundation a believable solution to the enigma of the Second Foundation.

He and his wife were leaving Kalgan where they had negotiated a trade agreement. They met up with Arkady Darell who was fleeing from Lord Stettin at the spaceport. They helped her evade capture and took her to Trantor.

Arkady then solved the riddle of the Second Foundation's location in a believable answer, and used Palver to pass it on to her father Toran Darell II in a coded message: "A circle has no end". This implied that the Second Foundation was on Terminus, because Hari Seldon had said that the Foundations were at "opposite ends of the Galaxy", and the Galaxy is a flat disc.

Preem Palver arranged for Kalgan to declare war on the Foundation through his agent Lady Callias mental manipulation of Lord Stettin. Kalgan lost the war, and so restored the Foundation's confidence in its purpose.

In his guise as a farmer/trader, he also negotiated to supply the Foundation with needed supplies at the close of the war, at which time he passed on Arkady's message. Dr. Darell, in the meantime, had pioneered an electronic "Mind Static" device that emitted a strong mental field using the brain's radio-wave composition. Sucessfully finding an undercover agent of the Second Foundation among them, Dr. Darell and his associates interrogate him and find the Second Foundation on Terminus.

It is later revealed by Preem Palver, in the last chapter, that Terminus is not, in fact, the real location of the Second Foundation. The physical scientists of the First Foundation were fooled by Seldon's phrasing, "opposite end of the Galaxy". They believed that Seldon's meaning was the physical opposite end, but Seldon was a social scientist. The social opposite end of the Galaxy from Terminus was Trantor, because Trantor was where the entire First Empire was governed from, while Terminus was an impoverished, abandoned planed on the Outer Rim. A small group of Second Foundationers was dispatched to Terminus from Trantor in order to fool the physical scientists into thinking that the real Second Foundation was there.

One of Preem Palver's most noted accomplishments is his exemplary guiding of the Second Foundation through the crisis. Seldon's psychohistory was useful only when dealing with large groups, so Palver had to rely on manipulation of individuals, which has very low probabilities.

Preem Palver is the nineteenth First Speaker of the Second Foundation and direct descendent of Stettin Palver, another character in the Foundation universe. In fact, Palver's name literally means 'first speaker'.

Wanda was born when Hari Seldon was 52. Right before Seldon's sixtieth birthday party, a sleeping Wanda overheard Tamwile Elar talking to the military junta that served as a government. She told Dors Venabili, Seldon's wife and bodyguard, that in her dream she heard the phrase "lemonade death", which Venabili investigated and discovered was a garbled version of "Layman-aided death", a phrase which meant a death helped by a non-mathematician.

When Wanda was 14, she asked Yugo Amaryl about how psychohistory was going, and Yugo showed her the Prime Radiant, a device that displayed all the psychohistoric equations. Wanda pointed to a certain set of equations and said it didn't look right. Yugo examined it and found it was indeed wrong. Yugo told Seldon about the incident, and Seldon deduced that Wanda had somehow read Yugo's mind and sensed his uneasiness about those equations. At that moment, Seldon conceived of a Second Foundation whose power would lie in its telepathic power and invisibility.

Wanda continued to develop her mentalic abilities during her life. When Seldon was 76, Raych had gone to Santanni and he needed a new bodyguard, so he hired someone named Stettin Palver. When Seldon was put on trial for attacking someone "without provocation" (according to a lying witness), Wanda used her powers to persuade the witness to tell the truth. What she didn't find out for another few years was that Palver was also using his mind there. When they happened to meet, they discovered that Palver was mentalic as well, and Seldon sent them to find others with those abilities. They would eventually form the Second Foundation.