Ray Palmer is the Atom, the Mighty Mite, a hero with the ability to shrink to incredible sizes while retaining his full mass, making him a formidable combatant. He was a member of the original Justice League of America, where he gained a great deal of respect from his peers. Aside from his crime-fighting career, he is also one of the world's top scientific minds, given his background as a brilliant physicist. He is capable of shrinking to subatomic sizes, and explores the universe on a frontier unknown to any other man.
A gifted physicist, Dr. Ray Palmer put his genius mind to good use by laboring tirelessly to help create a better world. His hard work led to advancements in matter compression and the discovery of white-dwarf star remnants on Earth. Creating a specialized, size-changing belt that houses a lens filled with star matter, Ray has the ability to shrink his size down to subatomic levels. This unique power inspired his heroic moniker and allows the Atom to handle things most other heroes can’t even see: viruses, parasites, nuclear reactions and beyond. Using phones, fiber-optic cables and even the bloodstreams of other heroes and villains, Ray can get wherever he needs to be at incredible speeds.
Ray is constantly learning and has become a leading mind in some of the most progressive areas of scientific thought and inquiry. This thirst for knowledge has made him the go-to hero when facing problems rooted in science, but it can sometimes cloud his judgment when the enemy is powered by the supernatural or motivated by something that seems irrational. Ray can tackle the world’s biggest quandaries and tiniest threats, but there’s one fight he always struggles with: accepting that some things in life just can’t be explained.
