Leucippus

/ luːˈsɪpəs /

noun

1. Leucippus5th century bc5th century bcMGreekPHILOSOPHY: philosopher 5th century bc Greek philosopher, who originated the atomist theory of matter, developed by his disciple, Democritus

Example Sentences

My new word honors the elder of the two proponents of the atomic hypothesis, Leucippus.

From Scientific American

Long ago two ancient Greek savants, Democritus and Leucippus, argued that matter consists of atoms, a notion that would be confirmed more than two millennia later.

From Scientific American

The atrocities visited upon the wild, reeling world and its inhabitants are the perfect manifestations of a set of claims made originally by Ancient Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Leucippus, glorified in the 15th and 16th century European Renaissance by philosophers such as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, refined by public scholars such as John Locke and Adam Smith, and to a large extent unquestioned to this day.

From Salon

Other writers say the cause of the dispute was the two daughters of the king of the country, Leucippus.

From Literature

Some of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chemists who began to notice patterns among certain elements were actually retracing the paths of ancient Greek atomists such as Democritus and Leucippus, who, in the fifth century B.C., had argued that invisible and indivisible particles made up everything we could see and touch.

From The New Yorker