Evolution of Idea of Atom

2500 years ago, scientists were called philosophers. Sometime between 460 and- 370 BC, two Greek philosophers, Democritus and Leucippus, came to the conclusion that everything had to be made of small building blocks. All the other philosophers at that time thought that everything in the universe was made of fire, water, earth, or ether. Democritus and Leucippus dared to be different. They called their building blocks "atoms.". Their idea, however, sat unstudied/dormant for 2,300 years.

Around five hundred years ago, a Polish scientist and an Italian scientist, Copernicus and Galileo, gave birth to modern science. They provided evidence that the earth orbited the sun, an important step on the road to understanding atoms because it freed curious minds to think new ideas. Nevertheless, it still took another few centuries and many bright thinkers to shift the predominant scientific thinking from a universe of "fire, water, earth, and ether" to one of atoms and molecules.

In the last 150 years, modern scientific ideas came in floods, thanks to modern communications and advances in technology. In the early 1900’s, science had no borders. An international group of scientists shared their explorations in mathematics, electricity and magnetism, radioactivity, and light. Since that time, scientists have discovered the various components that comprise atoms: electrons, neutrons, protons, and even sub-atomic particles, such as quarks and gluons.