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Ponder Stibbons is the second-most junior member of the Faculty of Unseen University, with an absolutely overwhelming interest in the more theoretical branches of applied magic. His senior fellows ignore his researches until circumstances force them upon their notice, whereupon Stibbons does rather over-react. When he gets the full attention of the fellow wizards he usually completely fails in explaining the topic. Maybe he is unable to verbalise his complex thoughts. On the other hand this may be because it is rather hard to explain quantum physics to someone with the attention span of a 4-year-old. Ponder Stibbons is quite popular with the younger students. He is the Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and Project Co-ordinator for pretty much all the research projects happening at UU.

Ponder Stibbons can usually be found in the High Energy Magic Building where he spends his time fiddling with the fabrics of time and space. He also finds it quite convenient that the senior fellows avoid going there. He is the creator (instigator? bemused attendant?) of the University's super-computer Hex which is also located in the High Energy Magic Building.

His first appearance is in Moving Pictures where he is a student at the Unseen University. His ascension to the faculty is a result of knocking over a bottle of ink on his exam and taking the absent Victor Tugelbend's instead - an exam that happened to contain only the question "What is your name?". When he reappears in Lords and Ladies he has become a member of the faculty as Reader of Invisible Writing, investigating the in potentia books in L-space. He is now also Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, in charge of developing all kinds of equipment and heading research activities in the High Energy Magic Building. Later he has gained additional positions at the university – Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic (The Last Hero) and Praelector. He apparently owes his rapid acceptance int the faculty to the fact that he got a record high score, 100%, on his final exam. One wonders if he's ever thanked Victor. It's possible that his unusually high work ethic for a wizard stems from a guilt need to be as clever as they all think he is.

Following the events of Lords and Ladies, Ponder excitedly asks Mustrum Ridcully for permission to stay on in Lancre, ostensibly to carry out field study on the Dancers and their "iron-loving" properties. Ridcully, who has noticed a certain understanding growing up between Stibbons and Diamanda, and who in this respect is older and wiser, sighs and grants the request. When Esmerelda Weatherwax raises an eyebrow, Ridcully's response (thinking of a long-gone summer when a younger wizard unsucessfully pursued a much younger witch) is "well, I couldn't say no, could I?" . To which Granny Weatherwax shrugs non-comittally and (thinking of a long-gone summer when a younger witch ran too fast for a much younger wizard to keep up with her) replies "it may come to something or it may come to nothing".

As Ponder was evidently back at Unseen University in time for the start of the next term, we have to surmise it was a summer holiday romance. However, this does not preclude the possibility that in sixty years' time, Archchancellor Stibbons might be ruefully remembering a summer and a girl...

Among his more ambitious projects are:

• The Discworld's theory of evolution
• The splitting of the thaum into its constituent resons
• The creation of a small area in which magic doesn't work and that doesn't run on Narrativium - the Roundworld project

Annotation

Ponder (which means 'think about deeply', 'muse' in English) has grown over the series from an unambitious young man to one of the most dynamic thinkers on the Disc, and a polymath to whom the wizards often turn "as one" whenever some concept or event crops up that they don't understand. He seems to combine a number of Roundworld historical characters in one insightful and investigative persona. He complains, to the Librarian and Jason Ogg in Lords and Ladies, with "the agonized expression of a man who has the whole great whirring machinery of the Universe to dismantle and only a bent paper clip to do it with": "Rocks! Why am I messing around with lumps of stone? When did they ever tell anyone anything? You know, sir, sometimes I think there's a great ocean of truth out there and I'm just sitting on the beach playing with...with stones."

This is a direct parody of Sir Isaac Newton, quite probably the greatest Roundworld thinker on natural truths that ever there was, who said: "I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered all before me."

Which either means that Terry has written Ponder as greater than he initially comes across, or that two similarly inquisitive minds have both been struck by the terrible thought that the entire universe is empirically knowable and understandable, quantifiable by immutable laws but that the current state of art/science/knowledge/technomancy is not enough for us to actaully discover those laws. This is the heartache of all who truly ponder (hah!) on the Great Mysteries. For those of us who don't, of course, it's quite enough that we know how to make beer and kebabs - or at least that somebody does, and that we are at liberty to partake of them.