NileRed | |
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Personal information | |
Born | Nigel Braun September 7, 1991 |
Education | McGill University (BS) |
Signature | ![]() |
Website | nile |
YouTube information | |
Channels | |
Years active | 2014–present |
Genre | Educational entertainment |
Subscribers | 8.64 million (main channel) 4.64 million (NileRed 2) 2.75 million (NileBlue) 16.5 million (combined) [a] [1] |
Total views | 3.37 billion (main channel) 101.62 million (NileRed 2) 331.30 million (NileBlue) 3.9 billion (combined) [b] [1] |
Associated acts | |
Last updated: March 11, 2025 |
Nigel Braun (born September 7, 1991), known professionally as NileRed, is a Canadian YouTuber known for his chemistry-related videos covering chemical reactions and strange compounds. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology. [2] [3]
Nigel Braun was born on September 7, 1991, in Montreal, Quebec, [4] to Dorian Braun, a sound engineer and former college professor, and Jody Tanaka. His younger brother, Corey, helps manage the channel. Braun has a BSc in biochemistry and a minor in pharmacology, both from McGill University. [3] [5]
Before starting a YouTube channel, Braun was a trained laboratory technician in an organic chemistry lab. [6] He later began a Master's degree program in chemistry at McGill, but left it to focus on the NileRed channel. [1] [3] [4]
Braun had been making videos, mainly tutorials, for fun since his mid-teenage years, then creating a YouTube channel on March 10, 2014. His first video was uploaded on March 24, 2014, and most of his early videos were recordings of his projects as a laboratory technician then at his parents' garage, with them later being filmed at his industrial-grade laboratory. [3] Braun wanted his channel name, NileRed, to be related to chemistry, but not too chemical-sounding. He and one of his university colleagues looked through a book containing chemical names and started with "N" because his name began with the same letter. They settled on nile red, a compound for dyeing used in biochemistry and microbiology, as it sounded good and did not sound much like a chemical. A second channel, NileBlue, was created in 2016 to showcase more casual projects than the main channel, and a shorts channel, NileRed 2 (formerly NileRed Shorts), was created in 2021. [7] [8] He is assisted in his channel by two family members and two friends he hired. [3]
Some of Braun's videos were deleted in 2018 during a purge of chemistry channels. [6] In 2019 and 2020, the web magazine Hackaday reported on Braun extracting bismuth from pepto bismol, [9] making aerogel, [10] and making superconductors. [11] In 2021, The A.V. Club and Newsweek reported on a video of him dissolving a hot dog in piranha solution, which went viral. [12] [13]
Year | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
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2020 | Streamy Awards | Learning and Education | Nominated | [14] |