Sabine Hossenfelder

fields = Quantum gravity, Black holes spouse = module = Infobox social media personality child = yes youtube_handle = @SabineHossenfelder youtube_display_name = Sabine Hossenfelder youtube_years_active = 2007–present youtube_genre = Science communication youtube_subscribers = 1.7 million youtube_views = 293 million

Academic career After post-doctoral posts at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, University of Arizona, UC Santa Barbara and Perimeter Institute in Canada,

Hossenfelder has published research on topics such as quantum gravity, black holes, and dark matter.

Public engagement Hossenfelder has written the popular-science blog Backreaction since 2006 and has contributed articles to Nature, New Scientist and Quanta Magazine. Her follow-up, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions, was published by Viking in 2022, covering topics such as In a positive review, Kirkus Reviews stated that the book suggests that "many spiritual ideas are compatible with modern physics".

During the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, Hossenfelder began focusing on YouTube content attempting to explain science in simple terms. As of 2025, her channel had reached 1.72 million subscribers and 293 million total views. She has written op-eds in The Guardian and The New York Times critiquing particle physics and the search for hypothesized particles using colliders. In her videos, she criticizes trends in particle physics research and accuses some of her colleagues of misleading the public, wasting research funds on "useless" papers, or lacking academic integrity. Critics contend that her presentation of these topics is exaggerated and misleading, and may encourage conspiratorial thinking and undermine both the perceived legitimacy of physics as a discipline and public trust in science more broadly. National Public Radio (the United States’ public radio broadcaster) described her views of modern physics research as "somewhat contrarian", while Daniel Kagan-Kans, writing in The Wall Street Journal, described her as part of a genre of "conspiracy physics" YouTubers alongside figures like Eric Weinstein.

Honours FIAS Award for Innovative Thinking (2019)

Selected publications Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. Basic Books (2018). . Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions. Viking (2022). .