Who's This? A time loop victim.
The facts: The victim of a time travel experiment (oh Rond Vidar, what did you do?), the Infinite Man first appears in Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233 (November 1977) by Paul Levitz and James Sherman. He then wouldn't appear until a Legion issue of Crisis, almost a decade later, and scattered appearances in Legion, but never as the main threat, sometimes just as Jaxon Rugarth.
How you could have heard of him: A similar character called Infinitus appears in the New52's Justice League United (the Legion even guest stars), but for older fans, his first story was reprinted in The Best of DC Digest #33.
Example story: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233 (November 1977) "The Infinite Man Who Conquered the Legion!" by Paul Levitz, James Sherman and Bob Wiacek
This is the origin story. Jaxon Rugarth is just your run of the mill physics professor who would agree to test Rond Vidar's "most powerful time machine ever built" to prove that time is on a loop (not that all DC Comics agree on this).
By 2977, they haven't licked time yet, and they apparently haven't licked the need for eye glasses, although maybe this will do both (unless the Infinite Man is wearing contacts). The problem with trusting your life to time machines built by irresponsible teenagers is that you might get stuck in the circular time vortex too long, and come out of it an angry temporal god! One that's gone through the whole of existence millions of times, gained transparency but lost his marbles, and can now summon dinosaurs to fight Legionnaires.
Dinosaur-vision, that's a new one. Also, tank-vision.
So he can pull stuff out of any time in history. Got it. But isn't there more powerful tech UP-stream? But wait, the Infinite Man can also send people to other times, and so, off goes Superboy (not sure that matters, since he can break the time barrier, but other Legionnaires would be well screwed. It's violent and dirty time travel, though. Superboy complains that it feels like "the kick of a Kansas mule". Was... was Clark kicked by a mule as a kid? And in this continuity, didn't have powers even as a baby? Or is there a green kryptonite/mule story out there I'm not thinking of? Anyway, he's back soon enough and the Infinite Man decides to bail, delaying his revenge on Rond for the moment. Here's what the world looks like to him:
A thousand years later (his time), he's honed his powers and is ready to return days later (Legion time). The Legion has been using that time on research - Dream Girl consults the High Seer of her world, Brainiac 5 the Computer Wisemen of Colu, and Phantom Girl the eternal ghosts of Bgtzl, but y'know, sometimes all you can come up with is a punch across the jaw.
The battle rages, with Infinite Man's armies of the past joining the fray, and despite foregrounding all this with references to the "research Legionnaires" being useless in a battle, which should have meant they'd offer useful clues to the entity's defeat, Rond Vidar more or less figures it out for himself and sends Jaxon back through the loop.
Yeah, perfectly humane and I'm sure it's never going to come back to bite them in the ass. Brainy does tell Rond to prioritize finding a cure since this is only making Jaxon stronger. He wouldn't return until Crisis, though, so not a big priority for Levitz himself.
The truth is, while the Infinite Man has a striking visual (the Who's Who entry is some of Greg LaRocque's strongest work), the Legion already has the Time Trapper as THE temporal villain, so he never had a chance. Opening on a story where he's all brawn and little brains (while the T.T. is a more adaptable mastermind figure) didn't help matters.
Who's Next? Earth-2's answer to the Inferior 5.
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