Polly Hare
Role: Mathematicist (Aerth); founder-figure of empire hypergeometry. Affiliation: unstated. Era: 0 A.L.
Summary
Author of the paper Towards an Effective Empirical Method via Algorithm Utilisation, published in 0 A.L. — the paper whose publication defines the start of the A.L. (Anno Logicae) calendar. Her work is the root of the Hare Method, which enables the discovery of the Fidon particle in 17 A.L. and every subsequent physics breakthrough in the 500 Year Climb.
By Ch. 05 — A Dictionary the compounding effect of her work is visible: the entire Causations field — and with it the empire’s galaxy-spanning quiet chamber communications backbone — rests on what the empire now calls the Hare decoherence process for positrons. The Ertian Surgeon’s Empiral Archive lecture namechecks her directly while walking through the chamber’s mechanism: the “decohered Hare positron” is the particle that, held across two causally-disconnected chambers, lets the empire talk across the galaxy without moving cause faster than light. Her name has become the adjective for a technique centuries after her death — the highest form of scientific immortality the book offers.
Appearances
- Ch. 02 — Timeline of The 500 Year Climb: Named as author of the founding paper at 0 A.L.
- Ch. 05 — A Dictionary: Invoked by name as the originator of the decoherence process underwriting hypergeometric quiet chamber messaging.
- Ch. 07 — 101 Things to Not Visit in the Galaxy Before You Die: Named indirectly — “Polly Hare’s devotees still remain strong in some regions of the empire” — in the context of the moon-sized nerve-filament creature at New Gara Bov that may compute the universe from first principles. Her devotees interpret this as support for the panpsychist tradition her work seeded.
Related
- Hare Method — the method she publishes.
- Fidon — the particle discovered via her method.
- Hypergeometric Quiet Chamber — the late-empire apparatus that depends on her decoherence process.
- Causations — the physics field descended from her work.
- Radetsky’s Law — the retroactive constraint that haunts every chamber built on her particles.
- Ming Shu, Francois Manelov — the timeline’s other named scientific progenitors.
Open questions
- Why “mathematicist” and not “mathematician” — is this a deliberate coinage by the author marking a future discipline?
- Did Hare herself describe her positrons as “decohered” in this sense, or is that a later reinterpretation of the 0 A.L. method?
- Does she appear as a character (not just a citation) in any of the unread stories?
- Who specifically are “Polly Hare’s devotees” — a philosophical school, a religious movement, a scientific faction?