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The Lord Rutherford of Nelson
Lord Rutherford of Nelson
Born	(1871-08-30)30 August 1871 Brightwater, New Zealand
Died	19 October 1937(1937-10-19) (aged 66) Cambridge, England
Residence	New Zealand, UK, Canada
Citizenship	New Zealand, United Kingdom
Nationality	New Zealander
Fields	Physicist-Chemist
Institutions	McGill University University of Manchester
Alma mater	University of Canterbury University of Cambridge
Academic advisors	Alexander Bickerton J. J. Thomson
Doctoral students	Nazir Ahmed Norman Alexander Edward Victor Appleton Robert William Boyle Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry Alexander MacAulay Cecil Powell Henry DeWolf Smyth Ernest Walton C. E. Wynn-Williams Yulii Borisovich Khariton
Other notable students	Edward Andrade Edward Victor Appleton Patrick Blackett Niels Bohr Bertram Boltwood Harriet Brooks Teddy Bullard James Chadwick John Cockcroft Charles Galton Darwin Charles Drummond Ellis Kazimierz Fajans Hans Geiger Otto Hahn Douglas Hartree Pyotr Kapitsa George Laurence Iven Mackay Ernest Marsden Mark Oliphant A. J. B. Robertson Frederick Soddy
Known for	Father of nuclear physics Rutherford model Rutherford scattering Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy Discovery of proton Rutherford (unit) Coining the term 'artificial disintegration'
Influenced	Henry Moseley Hans Geiger Albert Beaumont Wood
Notable awards	Rumford Medal (1905) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1908) Elliott Cresson Medal (1910) Matteucci Medal (1913) Copley Medal (1922) Franklin Medal (1924)
Signature The Lord Rutherford of Nelson's signature

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS^[1] (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.^[2] In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation,^[3] proving that the former was essentially helium ions. This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".^[4]

Rutherford performed his most famous work after he had moved to the Victoria University of Manchester in the UK in 1907 and was already a Nobel laureate. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,^[5] and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton.^[6] This led to the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by two students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.

Biography[link]

Ernest Rutherford was the son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England.^[7] James had emigrated to New Zealand from Perth, Scotland, "to raise a little flax and a lot of children". Ernest was born at Spring Grove (now Brightwater), near Nelson, New Zealand. His first name was mistakenly spelled Earnest when his birth was registered.^[8]

He studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand where he was president of the debating society, among other things. After gaining his BA, MA and BSc, and doing two years of research at the forefront of electrical technology, in 1895 Rutherford travelled to England for postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (1895–1898),^[9] and he briefly held the world record for the distance over which electromagnetic waves could be detected.

In 1898 Rutherford was appointed to succeed Hugh Longbourne Callendar in the chair of Macdonald Professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he did the work that gained him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. In 1900 he gained a DSc from the University of New Zealand. Also in 1900 he married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1945); they had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married Ralph Fowler. In 1907 Rutherford moved to Britain to take the chair of physics at the University of Manchester.

Later years and honours[link]

He was knighted in 1914. In 1916 he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. In 1919 he returned to the Cavendish as Director. Under him, Nobel Prizes were awarded to James Chadwick for discovering the neutron (in 1932), John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton for an experiment which was to be known as splitting the atom using a particle accelerator, and Edward Appleton for demonstrating the existence of the ionosphere. He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1925 and raised to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson, in 1931,^[10] a title that became extinct upon his unexpected death in 1937.

For some time beforehand, Rutherford had a small hernia, which he had neglected to have fixed, and it became strangulated, causing him to be violently ill. Despite an emergency operation in London, he died four days afterwards of what physicians termed "intestinal paralysis." He was given the high honor of burial in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton and other illustrious British scientists.^[11]

Scientific research[link]

During the investigation of radioactivity he coined the terms alpha ray and beta ray in 1899 to describe the two distinct types of radiation emitted by thorium and uranium. These rays were differentiated on the basis of penetrating power. From 1900 to 1903 he was joined at McGill by the young Frederick Soddy (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1921) and they collaborated on research into the transmutation of elements. Rutherford and Soddy demonstrated that radioactivity was often the spontaneous disintegration of atoms into other types of atoms (one element spontaneously being changed to another). This would suggest that radioactivity was a nuclear phenomenon, but the nucleus of the atom was not then known (Rutherford himself would later deduce it in 1911).

While studying radioactivty, he noticed that a sample of radioactive material invariably took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay—its "half-life"—and created a practical application using this constant rate of decay as a clock, which could then be used to help determine the age of the Earth, which turned out to be much older than most of the scientists at the time believed.

In 1903, Rutherford considered a type of radiation discovered (but not named) by French chemist Paul Villard in 1900, as an emission from radium, and realised that this observation must represent something different from his own alpha rays and beta rays, due to its very much greater penetrating power. Rutherford therefore gave this third type of radiation the name of gamma ray, which was retained by the scientific community. All three of Rutherford's terms are in standard use today (other types of radioactive decay have since been discovered, but Rutherford's three types are among the most common).

In Manchester, he continued to work with alpha radiation. In conjunction with Hans Geiger, he developed zinc sulfide scintillation screens and ionisation chambers to count alphas. By dividing the total charge they produced by the number counted, Rutherford decided that the charge on the alpha was two. In late 1907, Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds allowed alphas to penetrate a very thin window into an evacuated tube. As they sparked the tube into discharge, the spectrum obtained from it changed, as the alphas accumulated in the tube. Eventually, the clear spectrum of helium gas appeared, proving that alphas were at least ionised helium atoms, and probably helium nuclei.

Rutherford and the Gold Foil Experiment[link]

Rutherford remains the only science Nobel Prize winner to have performed his most famous work after receiving the prize.^[12] Along with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909, he carried out the Geiger–Marsden experiment, which demonstrated the nuclear nature of atoms. Rutherford was inspired to ask Geiger and Marsden in this experiment to look for alpha particles with very high deflection angles, of a type not expected from any theory of matter at that time. Such deflections, though rare, were found, and proved to be a smooth but high-order function of the deflection angle. It was Rutherford's interpretation of this data that led him to formulate the Rutherford model of the atom in 1911 — that a very small positively charged nucleus, containing much of the atom's mass, was orbited by low-mass electrons.

Before leaving Manchester in 1919 to take over the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, Rutherford became, in 1917, the first person to deliberately transmute one element into another. In this experiment, he had discovered peculiar radiations when alphas were projected into air, and narrowed the effect down to the nitrogen, not the oxygen in the air. Using pure nitrogen, Rutherord used alpha radiation to convert nitrogen into oxygen through the nuclear reaction ¹⁴N + α → ¹⁷O + proton. The proton was not then known. In the products of this reaction Rutherford simply identified hydrogen nuclei, by their similarity to the particle radiation from earlier experiments in which he had bombarded hydrogen gas with alpha particles to knock hydrogen nuclei out of hydrogen atoms. This result showed Rutherford that hydrogen nuclei were a part of nitrogen nuclei (and by inference, probably other nuclei as well). Such a construction had been suspected for many years on the basis of atomic weights which were whole numbers of that of hydrogen; see Prout's hypothesis. Hydrogen was known to be the lightest element, and its nuclei presumably the lightest nuclei. Now, because of all these considerations, Rutherford decided that a hydrogen nucleus was possibly a fundamental building block of all nuclei, and also possibly a new fundamental particle as well, since nothing was known from the nucleus that was lighter. Thus, Rutherford postulated hydrogen nuclei to be a new particle in 1920, which he dubbed the proton.

In 1921, while working with Niels Bohr (who postulated that electrons moved in specific orbits), Rutherford theorised about the existence of neutrons, which could somehow compensate for the repelling effect of the positive charges of protons by causing an attractive nuclear force and thus keep the nuclei from flying apart from the repulsion between protons. The only alternative to neutrons was the existence of "nuclear electrons" would counteracted some of the proton charges in nucleus, since by then it was known that nuclei had about twice the mass that could be accounted for if they were simply assembled from hydrogen nuclei (protons). But how these nuclear electrons could be trapped in the nucleus, was a mystery.

Rutherford's theory of neutrons was proved in 1932 by his associate James Chadwick, who recognized neutrons immediately when they were produced by other scientists and later himself, in bombarding beryllium with alpha particles. In 1935, Chadwick was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

Legacy[link]

Nuclear physics[link]

Rutherford's research, and work done under him as laboratory director, established the nuclear structure of the atom and the essential nature of radioactive decay as a nuclear process. Rutherford's team, using natural alpha particles, demonstrated induced nuclear transmutation and transmutation, and later, using protons from an accelerator, demonstrated artificially-induced nuclear reactions and transmutation. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford died too early to see Leó Szilárd's idea of controlled nuclear chain reactions come into being. However, a speech of Rutherford's about his artificially-induced transmutation in lithium, printed in the September 12, 1933 London paper The Times, was reported by Szilárd to have been his inspiration for thinking of the possibility of a controlled energy-producing nuclear chain reaction. Szilard had this idea while walking in London, on the same day.

Rutherford's speech touched on the 1932 work of his students John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. Rutherford realized that the energy released from the split lithium atoms was enormous, but he also realized that the energy needed for the accelerator, and its essential inefficiency in splitting atoms in this fashion, made the project an impossibility as a practical source of energy (accelerator-induced fission of light elements remains too inefficient to be used in this way, even today). Rutherford's speech in part, read:

We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.^[13]

Items named in honour of Rutherford's life and work[link]

A statue of Ernest Rutherford at his memorial in Brightwater, New Zealand.

Scientific discoveries

• the element rutherfordium, Rf, Z=104. (1997)^[14]

Institutions

• Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, a scientific research laboratory near Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK.
• Rutherford College, a school in Auckland, New Zealand
• Rutherford College, a college at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK
• the Rutherford Institute for Innovation at the University of Cambridge, UK
• Rutherford Intermediate School, Wanganui, New Zealand
• Rutherford Hall, a hall of residence at Loughborough University

Awards

• Rutherford Medal, the highest science medal awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, New Zealand.
• The Rutherford Award at Thomas Carr College for excellence in VCE Chemistry, Australia.
• The Rutherford Memorial Medal is an award for research in the fields of physics and chemistry by the Royal Society of Canada.
• The Rutherford Medal and Prize is awarded once every two years by the Institute of Physics for "distinguished research in nuclear physics or nuclear technology."
• The Rutherford Memorial Lecture is an international lecture tour under the auspices of the Royal Society created under the Rutherford Memorial Scheme in 1952.

Buildings

• Rutherford building at Bedford Modern School.
• a building of the modern Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK
• The Ernest Rutherford Physics Building at McGill University, Montreal, Canada^[15]
• Rutherford house, a boarding house at Nelson College^[16]
• Rutherford House, the primary building of Victoria University of Wellington's Pipitea Campus, originally the headquarters of the New Zealand Electricity Department, in Wellington, New Zealand.
• the physics and chemistry building at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand
• The Coupland Building at the University of Manchester where Rutherford worked was renamed The Rutherford Building in 2006.
• The Rutherford lecture theatre in the Schuster Laboratory at the University of Manchester

Major streets

• Rutherford Close, a residential street in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK.
• Lord Rutherford Road in Brightwater, New Zealand (near his birthplace)
• Rutherford Road in the biotech district of Carlsbad, California, USA.
• Rutherford Street in Nelson, New Zealand.

Other

• Rutherford House, at Rotorua Intermediate School, Rotorua, New Zealand
• The Rutherford Memorial at Brightwater, New Zealand
• The crater Rutherford on the Moon, and the crater Rutherford on Mars
• Image on the obverse of the New Zealand $100 note (since 1992).
• Rutherford was the subject of a play by Stuart Hoar.
• On the side of the Mond Laboratory on the site of the original Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, there is an engraving in Rutherford's memory in the form of a crocodile, this being the nickname given to him by its commissioner, his colleague Peter Kapitza. The initials of the engraver, Eric Gill, are visible within the mouth.
• The Rutherford Foundation, a charitable trust set up by the Royal Society of New Zealand to support research in science and technology.^[17]

Publications[link]

• Radio-activity (1904), 2nd ed. (1905), ISBN 978-1-60355-058-1
• Radioactive Transformations (1906), ISBN 978-1-60355-054-3
• Radiations from Radioactive Substances (1919)
• The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926)
• The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements (1933)
• The Newer Alchemy (1937)

Famous statements[link]

• "The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." – 1933^[18]
• "It was almost as if you fired a 15 inch shell into a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.” (describing the Geiger-Marsden experiment)
• "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" (though he was in 1908 awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry)
• "We haven't the money, so we've got to think."^[19]
• "If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment." ^[20]
• "You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 1012 to 1." ^[20]

Arms[link]

Arms of Ernest Rutherford Notes The arms of Ernest Rutherford consist of:[21][22] Crest A baron's coronet. On a helm wreathed of the Colors, a kiwi Proper. Escutcheon Per saltire arched Gules and Or, two inescutcheons voided of the first in fess, within each a martlet Sable. Supporters Dexter, Hermes Trismegistus (mythological patron of knowledge and alchemists). Sinister, a Maori warrior. Motto Primordia Quaerere Rerum ("To seek the first principles of things." Lucretius.)

See also[link]

• The Rutherford Journal

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Cragg, R. H. (1971). "Lord ernest rutherford of nelson (1871?1937)". Royal Institute of Chemistry, Reviews 4 (2): 129–120. DOI:10.1039/RR9710400129.  edit
• J. Campbell (1999) Rutherford: Scientist Supreme, AAS Publications, Christchurch
• Marsden, E. (1954). "The Rutherford Memorial Lecture, 1954. Rutherford-His Life and Work, 1871-1937". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 226 (1166): 283–226. DOI:10.1098/rspa.1954.0254.  edit
• Reeves, Richard (2008). A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-33369-8
• Rhodes, Richard (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44133-7
• Wilson, David (1983). Rutherford. Simple Genius, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-23805-4

External links[link]

Find more about Ernest Rutherford on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Biography from Nobel prize official website
• Nobel Lecture The Chemical Nature of the Alpha Particles from Radioactive Substances
• The Rutherford Museum
• Rutherford Scientist Supreme
• Profile from American Public Broadcasting Service
• Profile from The New Zealand Edge
• Annotated bibliography for Ernest Rutherford from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Biography in 1966 An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
• Rutherford at Canterbury University College from The Rutherford Journal
• Rutherford's Timebomb Article on Rutherford's contribution to dating the Age of the Earth
• BBC Radio 4: In Our Time — Rutherford
• The Rutherford Collection at his alma mater the University of Canterbury
• Ernest Rutherford NZ Post stamp, 2008 — includes link to short biography and other sources (NZHistory.net.nz)

Atom
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	(Cray) Suicide Squad #44 (August 1990) (Atom One Million) DC One Million 80-Page Giant #1,000,000 (August 1999)
Created by	(Cray) John Ostrander (Atom One Million) Grant Morrison
In-story information
Alter ego	- Al Pratt - Ray Palmer - Adam Cray - Ryan Choi
Team affiliations	(Cray) Suicide Squad Black Lantern Corps (Atom One Million) Justice Legion Alpha
Abilities	(All-except Pratt and Atom One Million) Ability to shrink and grow his body to varying degrees (including the subatomic level) while manipulating his weight and mass to his advantage

The Atom is a name shared by several fictional comic book superheroes from the DC Comics universe.

There have been five characters who have shared the Atom codename. The original Golden Age Atom, Al Pratt, was created by Ben Flinton and Bill O'Connor and first appeared in All-American Publications' All-American Comics #19 (Oct. 1940). The second Atom was the Silver Age Atom, Ray Palmer, who first appeared in 1961. The third Atom, Adam Cray, was a minor character present in Suicide Squad stories. The fourth Atom, Ryan Choi, debuted in a new Atom series in August 2006. The fifth Atom from the 853rd Century first appeared as part of Justice Legion Alpha in August 1999.

The Atom has been the star of multiple solo series, and four of the five have appeared as members of various superhero teams, such as the Justice Society of America, the Justice League, the Suicide Squad, and the Justice Legion Alpha.

Fictional character biographies[link]

Al Pratt[link]

The original Atom, Al Pratt, first appeared in All-American Comics #19 (Oct. 1940). He initially had no superpowers; instead, he was a diminutive college student and later a physicist who was depicted as a tough guy, a symbol of all the short kids who could still make a difference. Pratt was a founding member of the Justice Society of America, later gaining limited super-strength, and an energy charged 'atomic punch'. He died in the charge against Extant during the Zero Hour.^[1]

Ray Palmer[link]

The Atom introduced during the Silver Age of comic books in Showcase #34 (1961) is physicist and university professor Ray Palmer (named for real-life science fiction writer Raymond A. Palmer, who was himself quite short). Using a mass of white dwarf star matter, he fashioned a lens which allowed him to shrink down to subatomic size. Originally, his size and molecular density abilities derived from the white dwarf star material of his costume, controlled by mechanisms in his belt, and later by controls in the palms of his gloves. Much later, he gained the innate equivalent powers within his own body. After the events of Identity Crisis, Ray shrunk himself to microscopic size and disappeared. Finding him became a major theme of the Countdown year long series and crossover event.^[1]

Paul Hoben[link]

Prior to Ray Palmer's fateful trip to the Amazon Jungle, he learns his wife Jean Loring had an affair with fellow lawyer Paul Hoben and the two divorce. Later, Palmer would offer his blessing to the couple who marry and offers Hoben his size-changing belt in order to protect Ivy Town (as Ray wished to remain with the Morlaidhans) which he accepts. His belt would later be stolen by Adam Cray. It should be noted, Hoben never takes up the costume or name of the Atom.

Adam Cray[link]

Adam Cray, son of the murdered Senator Cray, first appeared as the Atom in the pages of Suicide Squad #44 by John Ostrander (August 1990). At first Cray was widely believed to be Ray Palmer in disguise (by both the fans and the characters). Actually Cray had been recruited by Palmer himself, who faked his death, in order to apprehend the Micro Squad (a group of villains that had been shrunk down) as well as uncover information about a shadowy government cabal, who were interested in Palmer's knowledge of the other heroes' secret identities (his own identity being no longer a secret).

While Palmer would infiltrate the Micro Squad, Cray would gather the attention of the Cabal as the new Atom, so that no one would notice Palmer assuming the identity of a fallen Micro Squad member.

Adam Cray ran with the Suicide Squad only for a short while, serving as a secret weapon most of the time, and his existence was for a while even unknown to others of the Squad. Cray even saves a wounded Amanda Waller from a group of assassins. At one point, Cray approaches Deadshot about the fact that Deadshot had murdered his father. Deadshot tells Cray that he would get one free shot at him. Soon after, on a mission, Cray is impaled through the chest by Blacksnake, a Micro Squad member who believes him to be Palmer.

After the murder of Cray (a move Palmer had not foreseen), Palmer reveals himself and defeats Cray's murderer. The ruse ended, Palmer explains himself to the Justice League, who had been searching for him, after hearing rumors of a new Atom.

During the events of Blackest Night, Adam's corpse is reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps alongside several other fallen Suicide Squad members.^[2] Following his reanimation, Adam and the other Black Lanterns travel to Belle Reve and attack Bane and Black Alice.^[3] Adam is apparently destroyed by the Manhunter's self destruct mechanism to unleashing an explosion of Green Lantern energy that eradicates the Black Lanterns.^[4]

Ryan Choi[link]

Ryan Choi, as described by DC solicitations, is "a young hotshot professor who's filling the extra spot on Ivy University's teaching staff. .. and who inadvertently ends up filling the old Atom's super-heroic shoes".^[5] This new Atom is based on a redesign by Grant Morrison. He debuted in the Brave New World one-shot, a preview of upcoming projects, and then appeared in the series, The All-New Atom, written by Gail Simone. He is later murdered by Deathstroke and his Titans.

Atom One Million[link]

An unnamed scientist in the 853rd Century performed experiments in superstring theory that creates a singularity and whose radiation alters his physical make-up. When the singularity threatened to expand and destroy his universe, he enters it in an attempt to save the universe but instead finds himself on an interdimensional bridge to another universe as his own is wiped out, unable to stop it. At the end of the bridge, he finds Superman Prime who came to help but was too late. Stranded, he searches this universe for remnants of the one he lost, in time taking the name the Atom and joining the Justice Legion Alpha when he helped them defeat the Bizarro-Legion. This Atom's powers differ from his predecessors in that he doesn't shrink but breaks up into several smaller duplicates of himself divided amongst his mass. At atomic size, these duplicates can mimic elements such as gold and oxygen.

Other versions[link]

Frank Miller portrayed Ray Palmer as a major player in Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. He was taken prisoner by Lex Luthor and made to live in one of his own petri dishes for a period of months until his rescue by Catgirl. He was then instrumental in the liberation of Kandor.

Tangent Comics[link]

In the Tangent Comics print, The Atom is Arthur Harrison Thompson, a subject of radiation testing on human beings. The first hero in the Tangent timeline, he was succeeded by his son, who was killed by the Tangent Comics version of the Fatal Five, and a grandson named Adam, who, in Tangent: Superman's Reign, is being held captive by Superman.

Elseworlds[link]

• Some other re-imaginings of the Atom include an appearance in League of Justice, a story portraying the Justice League in a The Lord of the Rings-type story where the Atom was recast as a wizard/fortune teller called "Atomus The Palmer".

• Al Pratt as the Atom was one of the three heroes who chose to work at the side of Senator Thompson in The Golden Age. When Al discovers that Thompson is really the Ultra-Humanite, he joins the other heroes against the villain and Dyna-Man.

• The Al Pratt Atom appeared in JSA: The Unholy Three as a post-WW2 intelligence agent with transparent atomic flesh and a visible skeleton.

• JLA: Age of Wonder where Ray Palmer worked with a science consortium whose numbers at one point included Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.

• JLA: Created Equal, after Ray Palmer is killed in the cosmic storm that nearly wipes out the rest of the male population on Earth, a graduate student named Jill Athron is given a research grant to study Palmer's white-dwarf-star-belt. She becomes the Atom and joins the Justice League.

• Atom evolved from a hawkman that had evolved from Robin in the Just Imagine... comic book.^[6]

52 Multiverse[link]

In the final issue of 52, a new Multiverse is revealed, originally consisting of 52 identical realities. Among the parallel realities shown is one designated "Earth-2". As a result of Mister Mind "eating" aspects of this reality, it takes on visual aspects similar to the pre-Crisis Earth-2, including the Atom among other Justice Society of America characters. The names of the characters and the team are not mentioned in the panel in which they appear, but the Atom is visually similar to the Al Pratt Atom.^[7] Based on comments by Grant Morrison, this alternate universe is not the pre-Crisis Earth-2.^[8]

In Countdown #30, the Challengers from Beyond encountered Earth-15, a world where the sidekicks had taken their mentor's places. On this Earth, the Atom is Jessica Palmer, a genius who graduated from MIT at age eight. The Search for Ray Palmer - Red Son features the Ray Palmer of Earth-30, an American captured by the Superman of a communist Russia. Countdown: Arena also depicts the Ray Palmer of Earth-6, who through unknown circumstances now has the powers and title of the Ray. The Search For Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman briefly features a female version of The Atom.

In the first issue of the 2010 Batman Beyond limited series, a future African-American version of the Atom known as Micron appears as one of the heroes of Earth-12.

Collected Editions[link]

[edit] Ray Palmer

[edit] Ryan Choi

In other media[link]

Television[link]

• Ray Palmer (voiced by Pat Harrington, Jr.) appeared in his own episodes in The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure.
• Ray Palmer appears with the SuperFriends in The All-New Super Friends Hour and The Super Friends Hour voiced by Wally Burr.
• The Atom also makes an appearance with a slightly different color scheme costume in the live action 1979 TV special "Legends of the Superheroes", specifically "The Roast" episode.
• A future version of the Atom called Micron appeared as a Justice League Unlimited member in the Batman Beyond two part episode "The Call" voiced by Wayne Brady. Unlike the Atom, Micron can grow as well as shrink, and similar to Atom Smasher with super-strength.
• In an early Justice League episode, "Legends," the League team up with the Justice Society pastiche the Justice Guild of America. JGA member Tom Turbine is a cross between Golden Age Atom and the Golden Age Superman^{[citation needed]}. The Atom is later mentioned by name in "Hereafter," as a future Vandal Savage describes how he stole technology from Ray Palmer and destroyed the world.
• The Atom (Ray Palmer) later appeared in Justice League Unlimited in both "Dark Heart" and "The Return" as a nanotechnology expert, voiced by John C. McGinley.
• The Atom (Ray Palmer) also appeared in the 1997 live action made-for-TV movie pilot, Justice League of America played by John Kassir.
• The Ryan Choi version of the Atom appears in the series Batman: The Brave and the Bold, voiced by James Sie. The Atom helps Batman stop evil sorcerer Felix Faust from opening Pandora's Box in "Evil Under the Sea!". He re-appeared along with Aquaman to save Batman from a virus created by Chemo in "Journey to the Center of the Bat!". Atom has a Crime Syndicate counterpart called Dyna-Mite, also voiced by James Sie. A mind-controlled Ryan Choi appears in "The Siege of Starro! Part One", demonstrating the ability to grow to giant sizes, which he uses to prevent Batman from destroying a signal leading Starro to Earth. He also appears in the teaser for "The Criss Cross Conspiracy!", where he, Batman, and Aquaman battle the Bug-Eyed Bandit.
• The Atom is briefly mentioned in the Young Justice episode "Failsafe", with Cat Grant stating that he had been killed alongside Batman, Icon and Aquaman during an alien invasion of Earth. The invasion is later revealed to simply be a training exercise. The Atom is shown among several candidates for Justice League membership in the episode "Agendas" where Batman cites his size-changing abilities as an important asset and he is officially inducted into the group in the episode "Usual Suspects".

Video Game[link]

• The Atom (Ray Palmer) appears in DC Universe Online.

See Also[link]

• Molecule

References[link]

External links[link]

• Index to the Atom's Earth-1 adventures
• Article on the history/legacy of The Atom from the Comics 101 article series by Scott Tipton
• THE SIMONE FILES II: THE ALL NEW ATOM
• COUNTING DOWN TO COUNTDOWN IV: THE GREAT DISASTER AND THE ATOM