Catherine Halsey -Halo franchise

Immensely intelligent, reclusive and somewhat self-centered, Halsey is almost entirely devoted to her work and the pursuit of knowledge to advance humankind. She has little regard for rules, authority or bureaucracy, in most cases viewing them as little more than obstacles to her work. While her singleminded dedication and seemingly detached personality have led to many perceiving her as devoid of morals or emotions, she has nonetheless shown to care about the few people close to her and has been deeply affected on a personal level by the moral implications of her work.

Halsey tends to be professional and authoritative when speaking to people, which she rarely does outside of meetings and briefings. She has little patience for extraneous detail, wanting the important facts out of them and then concluding their meeting.[256] Considered extremely difficult to read,[257] she rarely voices her current emotions, and often observes people while speaking to them to discern hidden details. Having grown accustomed to keeping secrets, she may appear enigmatic and manipulative at times; while she despises efforts to withhold information from herself, she has a tendency of laying her own plans in advance and only divulging information when it becomes relevant.[194] She prefers to work with her authority unchallenged, and does not appreciate being bogged down by having to explain herself, especially in a hurry. On Onyx, this led to a conflict between her and Kurt Ambrose, who eventually confronted the doctor over her self-assumed leadership and instead asserted his own command over the mission, much to Halsey's dismay; despite this, she remained confident in Kurt's leadership ability.[258] When necessary, however, Halsey has been very verbose about describing the subject at hand, namely if attempting to convince someone of its importance. Outside of professional contexts, her persona has been considered charming and likable by some.[259]

Above most of her compatriots in terms of both intelligence and knowledge, Halsey prefers to perform her most important work personally, rarely entrusting particularly significant scientific tasks to others. She often assumes a certain ownership over her work, most prominently seen with her referring to the Spartan-IIs as "her" Spartans and reacting negatively to others co-opting her work. Halsey is keen to note any flaws she finds in her colleagues' work, and quick to point out when she considers someone unqualified.[201][260] However, she also has an eye for talent and will give credit for any accomplishments she sees as remarkable.[260] It is not uncommon for her to have respect for someone and yet also dislike them, as shown in the cases of her student Ellen Anders[261] and the Spartan-III Catherine-B320.[262] Halsey is an atheist, lacking belief in the existence of any god.[263]

Halsey's intelligence is unquestionable but her judgment is not always correct. Although bearing the guilt of the Spartan program, her sense of right and wrong has differed greatly. When sure it will produce results, Halsey is not above breaking the law to achieve her goals, such as cloning herself to produce Cortana, using a stolen Slipspace engine for her fractal AI experiment, and kidnapping Kelly and fleeing to Onyx. "The ends justify the means" appears to be her ideology, as an interrogator after she was arrested accused her of. To soothe her conscience, she often deliberately reduces the wording of harsh consequences, such as telling John that the augmentations was just his next mission, or Soren-066 that the pain from his botched surgery would eventually go away.[264]Dr. Halsey is not keen on losing, as seen when she kept losing at a game of Twenty Questions with her Spartans and soon quit playing.[265] She was also resentful of attempts to keep information from her, demanding to know everything the UNSC could provide to keep them from deceiving her. Any attempts to keep her in the dark would eventually fail once she'd begin hacking, since Halsey often programmed backdoors into everything she designed.[210][266] According to Black-Box, Halsey was not too different from an AI, being fueled by a desire to know everything she could.[200] She is easily absorbed by her work and the acquisition of knowledge to the point of ignoring more pressing matters; on Onyx, she requested the rest of the group to leave her behind in the world's map room in order to learn more until being snapped out of her reverie by a Covenant attack.[267]

Halsey has a notable fondness for classical music, especially Debussy. When getting to work, Halsey has a habit of issuing a series of commands to AIs in a rapid sequence (often ending with her requesting the AI to play one of her preferred pieces of classical music), which has on some occasions given less sophisticated AIs a pause to process the information.[11][268][269] She has a bad habit of keeping a messy office and drinking cold coffee, tending to prepare the drink and then become distracted by work, only remembering it hours, sometimes days, later.[270][271] She preferred darker coffees than those grown on Reach.[272] On January 9, 2535 she met with Chief Petty Officer J. G. Jimes in order to procure quality Beniese coffee.[273]

An ONI-commissioned psychological evaluation conducted by B.M. Parkes in 2551 largely correlated with observed aspects of Halsey's personality, demonstrating exceedingly high cognitive performance (which was noted to possibly obfuscate the rest of the results) but a markedly low score in teamwork and an uncommonly high "liability" index, 64% higher than the average ONI rating due to her demonstrated disregard for authority. The analysts suggested that she be placed under closer surveillance, with two or three handlers accompanying her at all times at both of her primary working sites on Reach.[147] Halsey designed the most recent model of AI matrix compiler used in the scanning of human brains to create smart AIs. This particular compiler was still in use by 2557.[201]Dr. Halsey carried extraordinary guilt because of the SPARTAN-II project, in the feeling that she had exploited the children and destroyed their lives. Although she continued to support the Spartans and gained monumental prestige for her efforts, she also felt responsible for each one who died. She could never bring herself to justify the Spartans' exploitation as a necessary sacrifice.[275][276]

Her involvement with the SPARTAN-II program, then codenamed "ORION Project Generation II", was born out of her own initiative, although ONI had long intended to recruit her for the task. Improving upon Dr. Elias Carver's projections for predicted colonial aggression, she privately ran over 1,400 simulations with varied parameters, always coming to the conclusion that the Outer Colonies would go into all-out war against the Inner Colonies and Earth within a short span of time. If the UNSC did not act, this would mean a minimum of thirty years of open war and billions of casualties, while the worst-case scenario was indefinite conflict and the potential collapse of human civilization. Viewing it as her personal responsibility to prevent this scenario from coming to pass, she presented her results to Vice Admiral Stanforth, then-head of ONI Section III, only to find that the UNSC had already come to the same conclusions with their own projections. As it turned out, ONI had been monitoring her for years, but they had waited for her to come up with the numbers on her own, knowing that she could not be convinced to work for them otherwise. Although she was distrustful of ONI, she agreed to work for them on the program out of her personal commitment to humanity's cause.[14] The nuclear bombing of the Haven arcology by the Freedom and Liberation Party further reinforced her determination.[24]

At the conceptual phase of the SPARTAN-II project, Halsey evidently failed to fully understand its moral implications; she was constantly revolted upon seeing her work in practice, and the notion of "sacrificing the few to save the many" rarely worked to soothe her conscience.[277] While she attempted to maintain a professional distance to the SPARTAN-II candidates, she could never bring herself to view them as mere test subjects and always addressed them by their first names.[278] She held considerable respect for the Spartans and easily recognized them through subtle habits in their postures even with their armor on, which seemed to greatly annoy them.[279] In turn, the Spartans greatly respected Dr. Halsey, (with one stating that he had been "All hers half [his] life"),[280] and would follow her orders and suggestions in the absence of those from a superior officer.[281] The doctor is also privy to many of the recruits' secrets, having taught several to them as children, such as the Oly Oly Oxen Free security tune.[282] Despite her admiration of the Spartans, Halsey always kept these feelings to herself so as to not make them feel excluded due to the special treatment they get from most other humans.[11]

Despite ONI's intentions to continue with the SPARTAN-II program, Dr. Halsey began having difficulty finding a suitably large number of candidates that fit her genetic and age profiles. Additionally, most of her budget was now being used to maintain the MJOLNIR armor in service. Eventually, ONI discontinued the SPARTAN-II program, reassigned most of its personnel to other projects (such as the SPARTAN-III program, held secret from Halsey), relocated Halsey from her former workplace at Camp Hathcock to CASTLE Base,[260] and cut off her access to classified material. ONI's reticence vanished, her budget mushroomed overnight, and she was offered a corner office in Olympic Tower in New Alexandria. However, Halsey decided to remain in CASTLE as a means of revenge against ONI, which would now have to spend half the day going through security checks.[283] Halsey was stationed primarily on the planet Reach throughout her decades of work for ONI. By 2551, she lived in the community of Csongrád, near CASTLE Base.[147] Aside from her continued work on the SPARTAN-II and MJOLNIR projects, Halsey made huge contributions to many other ONI Section III projects, including the creation and deployment of AI constructs. She supervised the creation of the template for third-generation smart AIs,[20] the first ones of which became operational in 2521.[260]

Halsey is a surrogate "mother" to all of the Spartan IIs, and has seen them all in every state of undress. Her motherly affection, however, can sometimes take carnal forms when the opportunity presents itself.

Appearance: Because she is most often occupied with her work, Halsey typically wears a lab coat. On Reach she was often seen wearing a skirt although she has later shown to don the standard ONI scientist utility clothes with a blue tunic and pants under her lab coat. When outdoors in Reach's Highlands and in her SWORD base archaeological site she often wore a heavy parka because of the cold.[260] She has a set of antique[322] bifocal[282] glasses which feature a variety of functions, including a heads-up display, a retinal and brain pattern scanner,[323] as well as automatic polarization.[257] The frames contain tiny projectors which can beam classified data directly onto her retina.[324] However, she seems to have largely abandoned her use of the glasses in the post-war era.

She typically carries a personal laptop on her as well as a purse, the latter containing a data pad, a pocket archive, a change of clothes, self-amalgamating tape, a pocket saw, a solar power pack, medications, a folding knife, her mother's antique Patek Philippe luxury watch, as well as coffee for "emergencies".[325] Halsey had several personal AIs, including Jerrod, who could run on her laptop, and Kalmiya, who served as her assistant on Reach.[326] Halsey had a snowglobe on her desk in her CASTLE Base office, containing a three-centimeter-tall representation of the Matterhorn being scaled by a tiny Swiss climber.[327]

Halsey kept a journal with her ever since she was eighteen, purchased from a shop on Reach. She used the journal as a medium through which to express her thoughts and concerns, draw sketches, and map out important research notes for approximately forty-two years. It was not Halsey's only journal, since she had a second one for note-taking and also had an encrypted audio journal on her computer, though she sometimes erased its entries soon after recording them.[328] Halsey frequently left her first journal lying around buried under papers, and procrastinated on adding some security measures to it to prevent it from being stolen.[329] This absent-mindedness eventually backfired on her when she forgot the journal during her escape from SWORD Base. The journal was later recovered by ONI in 2553, and used as evidence to condemn her.

Halsey has medium sized breasts and a very thick bush.

Dr Halsey is performing a physical evaluation on a Spartan II to see if they have the potential to carry on certain genetic traits through offspring.