Democritus was an ancient Greek philosopher, who was known for his influence on modern science more than any other pre-Socratic philosopher. He was also known as the “Laughing Philosopher", for his inclination to mock fellow citizens for their foolishness. What Democritus left with his legacy has not survived in all of its physicality, but he has been written about by Aristotle, whom found Democritus to be his biggest competitor in the natural sciences, along with a few others. No one knows the exact details of when he was born, but it is estimated to be sometime around 460 BCE in Abdera, Thrace. His father was an aristocrat and received Xerxes the Great, the king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, as he traveled through Abdera. Xerxes in turn, left behind some of his magi or wise men and it is told that Democritus had the good graces to have learned as much as he could from …show more content…
After his father's death, whom he was very close to, Democritus left to travel the world in search of experience and wisdom. He traveled to Babylon, Egypt, Ethiopia and perhaps even India as well using up his inheritance. It is said that Democritus did not have any care for affluence of his family and preferred to put everything into his studies, investigations and explorations. He is said to have made the statement that he would rather discover a new cause of nature than be King of Persia. In his travels he may have met Anaxagoras, may have been friends with Hippocrates, and possibly visited Athens when Socrates and Plato would were present, if he was there. Democritus was a student of Leucippus, Greek tradition regarded him as the founder of atomism in ancient Greek philosophy, a not so well know philosopher and carried his atomist philosophy by further developing it rather