The man who lived from 460 BC - 370 BC and is credited with being among the first to suggest the idea of atoms is Democritus.

While Democritus's ideas were not based on scientific experimentation like modern atomic theory, he proposed that all matter was composed of indivisible particles called *atomos* (meaning "uncuttable" in Greek). This idea was revolutionary for its time, and it laid the foundation for later scientific investigations into the nature of matter.