Antman

Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym was an American biochemist with extensive knowledge in various scientific fields. He was born and raised in East Nowhere, Nebraska the son of Brad Pym and Doris Pym. A prodigy from birth, he spent his time creating fantastical and fun inventions encourage by his grandmother. But on her death, he became more serious and decided to stop with his wild ideas.

He attended university where his own professors discouraged Pym's use of his own imagination and inventing things for fun by being told that he would never invent anything that would impact the world. Pym excelled better than any of his fellow classmates, earning his doctorate in biochemistry while his friends were still undergrads.

He married Maria Trovaya, a brave and beautiful young woman who had been a political dissident in her native Hungary, from which she had fled. Naively believing that his American citizenship would protect her, Henry and Maria Pym traveled to Hungary shortly after their marriage. The Pyms were confronted by agents of the secret police there. Henry Pym was knocked unconscious and Maria was murdered. Pym was greatly distraught by his wife's death, and decided to do whatever he could in the future to battle injustice and inhumanity.

Discovery of Pym Particles
Back in the United States, Pym discovered a rare group of subatomic particles, which have become known as the "Pym Particles." Pym was able, through the application of magnetic fields, to entrap the particles within two separate serums. One serum would reduce the size of persons and objects, and the other would restore them to their normal size. Pym tested the reducing serum on himself and discovered it was more powerful than he had expected: it reduced him to the size of an insect. Pym became entrapped in an anthill and was pursued by the ants within. He escaped and restored himself to his normal size with his other serum. Deciding that the serums were too dangerous to exist, Pym destroyed both of them.

However, weeks later he reconsidered his decision and began to recreate the serums, whose existence he then kept secret. Inspired by his experience in the anthill, Pym undertook a study of ants, and theorized that ants communicate through psionic / electrical waves transmitted through their antennae. After months of work, Pym succeeded in creating his first "cybernetic helmet," which would enable him to communicate with the ants through transmitting and receiving psionic / electrical waves. Thinking that someday he might want to use the shrinking potion on himself again, Pym also designed a protective suit for himself, Unstable Molecules and steel mesh. That same day, however, Pym received an assignment from the government to concoct a gas that would provide people with temporary, limited immunity to radioactivity under certain specific circumstances, based on his previous work. The government also assigned four other scientists to assist him in the project. The KGB, the Soviet Intelligence agency, learned of Pym's project and sent agents who held Pym and his assistants prisoner in their own laboratory. Only Pym knew the entire formula for the gas they had by now developed, and he refused to tell the Soviet agents. The agents set about searching the laboratory for the formula, intending to kill Pym and his assistants afterward. Unseen, Pym donned the cybernetic helmet and protective costume and, using his reducing formula, shrank himself to the size of an ant. He escaped to an anthill outside, put a large number of ants under his control through the helmet, and used them to attack the agents and free his men, who then overpowered their assailants. Pym then restored himself to normal size. Afterwards, in the guise of the Ant-Man, Pym battled various menaces, including Comrade X, the Protector, the criminal scientist Elihas "Egghead" Starr, who was to become Pym's greatest enemy, as well as the Scarlet Beetle, the Hijacker, the alien Kulla, the Voice and the Time Master.