Dr. Ray Palmer, otherwise known as The Atom, is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He was created by editor and co-plotter Julius Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox and penciler Gil Kane. The Atom was one of the first superheroes of the Silver Age of comic books and debuted in Showcase #34. Take a look below for 24 more awesome and fascinating facts about Ray Palmer.

1. Ray Palmer is a physicist and professor at Ivy University in fictional city of Ivy Town, somewhere in New England. He specializes in matter compression as a means to fight overpopulation, famine and other world problems.

2. Using a mass of white dwarf star matter that he finds after it lands on Earth, Palmer makes a lens that enables him to shrink any object to any degree that he wants.

3. The Atom once shrunk himself and went inside of a man’s body and regrew, causing the man’s body to be torn apart.

4. He not only decreases the space between atoms to shrink, but also releases chemical bonds to the matter itself, making him able to go sub-atomic.

5. Since he retains his full strength as he shrinks, by rapidly mass shifting, he can leap like a flea.

6. The Atom can also become weightless to glide on breezes.

7. By shrinking to the size of a subatomic particle, he can travel through conductive landline wires at the speed of electricity.

8. Originally, Palmer had to manipulate his abilities via a belt and later with hand movements, before eventually syncing with his brain waves itself.

9. He’s one of the few heroes in the DC Universe that has 100% control over his body on the molecular level, therefore, making him more powerful than he is often portrayed.

10. He can make his costume appear and disappear at will by shifting its atoms between this dimension and another.

11. During the countdown to Final Crisis, Palmer found that he could shrink down beyond the subatomic scale in order to travel through the multiverse by slipping below the quantum layer beneath reality.

12. He’s been shown to be able to ride phone lines to his destination by dialing a number and traveling through the handset.

13. Palmer has shrunk into Superman‘s bloodstream and manually rearranged his molecules to create Kryptonite and he defused Black Lantern Al Pratt’s Atomic Punch and resized it within him, ripping his body apart in the process.

14. In the events of Zero Hour, the Atom gained the ability to grow in size and internalize his other abilities without the use of his white dwarf star based device. However, when he returned to his natural age, these abilities were lost.

15. He was a member of the Indigo Tribe, and possessed an indigo power ring that was powered by compassion. The ring also provided him with flight, energy projects and a protective force field.

16. Palmer has been shown that he’s able to shrink others down with him if the situation requires it. For example, he shrunk himself down alongside Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Plastic Man in order to repair the links between seven shattered subatomic particles.

17. Anyone other than himself that he shrinks will explode after 2 minutes if not returned to their normal size, although he was later able to extend this time to about an hour.

18. In the Justice League episode “Hereafter,” a future version of Vandal Savage mentioned that when he was younger, he stole a piece of dwarf star matter from Ray Palmer.

19. In the television show Arrow, Ray Palmer is introduced as a tech genius and business rival for Oliver Queen, hoping to take over Queen Consolidated and help repair the reputation of Starling City.

20. In Justice League of America: Age of Wonder, Palmer is seen working with a science consortium where both Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla took part in at one point.

21. The Earth-2 counterpart for the Atom is Al Pratt. The difference between the two is that while Al was a college student, Ray is a college professor.

22. Some time after becoming the Atom, Palmer was offered membership in the Justice League of America, an offer that he ended up accepting.

23. While he was still an active member of the Justice League, Palmer met Jean Loring, who he would eventually marry.

24. When Jean drifted into an affair out of loneliness with Paul Hoben, Palmer discovered a subatomic world in the Amazon and fell in love with a woman named Laethwen.