Salvor Hardin is the first mayor of Terminus City, the sole inhabited location on the planet Terminus. Terminus is settled by a colony of scientists and professionals, the Encyclopedia Foundation, working on compiling human knowledge into a compendium called the "Encyclopedia Galactica", a project that hides the true meaning of the colony, which is meant by its founder Hari Seldon to outlast the inevitable fall of the Galactic Empire and preserve the sciences through the dark age that must follow. Seldon is noted to have been aware of this future due to the tenets of psychohistory, a science originally formulated by Seldon himself.