Bel Arvardan

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Bel Arvardan is a fictional character in Pebble in the Sky, a part of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series of stories and novels.

He was born in the year 815 of the Galactic Era (815 G.E.) on the planet Baronn, located in the Sirius sector. Arvardan became the youngest person, at the age of 23, to graduate as Senior Archaeologist at the University of Arcturus. He was also the first person to have his senior dissertation, entitled "On the Antiquity of Artifacts in the Sirius Sector with Considerations of the Application There of to the Radiation Hypothesis of Human Origin," rejected for print by the Journal of the Galactic Archaeological Society.

Arvardan then became a senior research associate at the Imperial Archaeological Institute. As a member of that institute, he led an archaeological expedition to Earth in the year 827 G.E. Whilst there, Arvardan helped Joseph Schwartz (himself a temporally-displaced Earthman from the year 1949 A.D.), Affret Shekt, and Pola Shekt discover and foil a plot to destroy the galaxy by Terran zealots. As a result of the heroic actions of Bel Arvardan and Joseph Schwartz, the Empire benevolently agreed to revitalize Earth's radioactive ecology in the hopes of one day making it a fully-productive world once more, and began transporting soil to help repair the damaged zones.

He later became a naturalized citizen of Earth, and married Pola Shekt, both volunteering to spend the rest of their lives working to clean up Earth's radioactive wastelands.

In Foundation's Edge, Munn Li Compor tells Golan Trevize that Bel Arvardan is remembered as "a folk-hero in Comporellon". The events of Pebble in the Sky vaguely recalled as well.