The Father of the Atom: Democritus and the Nature of Matter

This biography of the amazing Democritus, a Greek philosopher who lived almost 2,500 years ago, describes how he was right, or almost right, about so many ideas of modern science. He correctly predicted the behavior of atoms and that atoms combined to form elements and compounds. The link between Democritus’s atomic theory and modern chemistry began with the idea of elements, substances composed of only one sort of atom.