Sabine Hossenfelder German Writer From Frankfurt

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German physicist, author and science communicator. She spent about two decades as an academic theoretical physicist before becoming widely known through her YouTube channel in the early 2020s. She was born on 18 September 1976 in Frankfurt and is known both for popular-science books and for outspoken criticism of how research in fundamental physics is conducted.

Early life

Hossenfelder was born in Frankfurt and studied mathematics and physics at Goethe University Frankfurt. She stayed at the same university for her doctorate in theoretical physics, which she completed in 2003 under the supervision of Horst Stöcker. Her dissertation examined how microscopic black holes might be produced in models that include large extra dimensions.

Career

After her doctorate she held a series of postdoctoral positions at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, the University of Arizona, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Perimeter Institute in Canada. In 2009 she joined NORDITA in Stockholm as an assistant professor. Six years later, in 2015, she moved to the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), where she led the research group Analog Systems for Gravity Duals. In 2023 she became a visiting researcher affiliated with the Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, working on the role of locality and fine-tuning in the foundations of quantum mechanics. In September 2025 she stated that she was no longer associated with that center.

Her published research has covered quantum gravity, black holes and dark matter. One of her papers, written with Tim Palmer and published in Frontiers in Physics in 2020, is titled "Rethinking Superdeterminism".

Alongside her research she has written for a general audience. Since 2006 she has maintained the blog Backreaction, and she has contributed articles to Scientific American, New Scientist and Quanta Magazine. Her first book for general readers, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, was published by Basic Books in 2018. It argues that a preference for mathematically elegant theories has slowed progress in fundamental physics. Her second book, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions, was published by Viking in 2022. It looks at what physics can contribute to questions about free will, consciousness and the origin of the universe. Kirkus Reviews, in a favourable assessment, took the book to suggest that many spiritual ideas are compatible with modern physics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic she began concentrating on YouTube videos that explain science in plain terms. Her channel passed one million subscribers by September 2023, and NPR reported that income from the channel helped to pay for her physics research. By November 2024 making videos had become her main activity, and she spent less time on research. As of September 2026 the channel had about 1.79 million subscribers and roughly 378 million total views.

Recognition

In 2019 Hossenfelder received the first Award for Innovative Thinking from the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. For her YouTube work she was awarded the Silver Play Button in 2020 and the Gold Play Button in 2023.

Public roles

Hossenfelder is known for sharply critical views of academic physics. NPR characterised her position on current research as somewhat contrarian. She has written opinion pieces in The Guardian and The New York Times that question particle physics and the search for hypothesised particles with colliders. In a published reply, the cosmologist Phil Bull argued that searches which come up empty still advance science, because they test hypotheses and rule out possibilities. In 2024 she described string theory as "undead", yet a few weeks afterwards she said that a paper using bootstrapping methods strengthened the case for the theory.

Her commentary has also drawn criticism. Writing for the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in April 2025, Jonathan Jarry praised her skill at explaining complex science but disagreed with her broader claims about academic research. He argued that her criticism had widened from particle physics to the suggestion that science as a whole was failing, and that describing publicly funded research as a scam was misleading and could erode public trust. He added that her videos critical of academia tended to attract more views than her educational ones. In a September 2025 essay in The Wall Street Journal, Dan Kagan-Kans placed her among a group of YouTubers he called "conspiracy physics" creators, who present academic physics as a corrupt establishment.

Personal life

Hossenfelder is married to Stefan Scherer.