Name: Atom
Universe: Post-Crisis
Alter Ego: Raymond (Ray) Palmer
Occupation: Former physics professor
Marital Status: Separated
Group Affiliation: Justice League
Base of Operations: Ivy Town
Known Relatives: David Palmer (father, deceased), Susan Taylor (mother, deceased), Jean Palmer (ex-wife)
Height: 6 ft.
Weight: 180 lbs.
Hair Color: Auburn
Eye Color: Brown
First Appearance: Sword of the Atom Special #3

History:
While a graduate student, Ray Palmer discovered a fragment of a white dwarf star that had fallen to Earth. By focusing ultra-violet light upon inanimate objects through a lens he made from the fragment, Palmer could shrink them to a fraction of their normal sizes. However, the size-changing process created an instability in the objects that made them explode.

Later, when he and others were trapped by a life-threatening cave-in, Palmer secretly used the lens on himself and, in reduced size, was able to climb a nearly sheer wall and an exit. To Palmer's surprise, the lens returned him to his normal size without causing him to explode, presumably due to some "x-factor" in his genetic makeup.

From the fragment, Palmer created a costume and controls that enabled him to change his size and weight. In his reduced, costumed form, Palmer became the crime-fighter known as the Atom.

Eventually, Palmer became a physics professor at Ivy University in Ivy Town in New England. As the Atom, he joined the Justice League of America. As Palmer, his marriage to attorney Jean Loring proved unsuccessful, and Jean eventually left him.

After being exposed to radiation that trapped Atom at six inches, he allowed his dual identity to be revealed to the world and resolved to remain tiny and live among the Katarthans, a race of equally small aliens living in the Amazon jungle. Recently, however, the Atom learned that the dangerous radiation he had absorbed may have worn off. After the Katarthans were apparently wiped out in a fire, the Atom resolved to begin life anew in Ivy Town.

Powers:
The Atom's current costume, which is made of material from a white dwarf star, enables him to reduce his size and weight by transferring part of his mass into another dimension. He can reclaim mass from that dimension in order to increase his size and weight or both. The Atom controls the costume mentally through an encephalotronic grid in the costume's head-piece keyed to his unique brainwaves. The Atom can mentally make his costume appear or disappear by shifting most of its atoms to or from the other dimension.

The Atom has a mental link with the white dwarf matter to which he has been regularly exposed, most of whose mass is in the other dimension. He can draw on that mass to punch with super-concussive force.

The Atom is an Olympic-level gymnast and an excellent hand-to-hand combatant.