A pure atheist is impossible to find. An atheist is one who believes only in the concrete and tangible, but life is not all concrete and tangible, nor is this universe.
Whether it is business, science or art, all involve a certain amount of guesswork, assumptions, imagination and intuition. All of them have some aspects that are abstract in nature and are not tangible. The moment an atheist accepts, even remotely, something that is unexplainable, he ceases to be an atheist.
An intelligent person cannot rule out all the mysteries in life and the universe, and hence cannot honestly be an atheist. So-called atheists are perhaps only denouncing certain concepts of God.
Was Buddha an atheist? No, in one sense, because he professed emptiness, which is very hard for an atheist to accept, and yes in another sense because he did not profess concepts of God. An atheist believes only what he can see, but Buddha said all that you see is not real. If only all present-day atheists could be Buddhas!
