SELDON, HARI—… It is customary to think of Hari Seldon only in connection with psychohistory, to see him only as mathematics and social change personified. There is no doubt that he himself encouraged this for at no time in his formal writings did he give any hint as to how he came to solve the various problems of psychohistory. His leaps of thought might have all been plucked from air, for all he tells us. Nor does he tell us of the blind alleys into which he crept or the wrong turnings he may have made.

… As for his private life, it is a blank. Concerning his parents and siblings, we know a handful of factors, no more. His only son, Raych Seldon, is known to have been adopted, but how that came about is not known. Concerning his wife, we only know that she existed. Clearly, Seldon wanted to be a cipher except where psychohistory was concerned. It is as though he felt—or wanted it to be felt—that he did not live, he merely psychohistorified.

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA