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, [3] she joined NORDITA in Stockholm as an assistant professor in 2009. In 2015 she moved to the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she led the "Analog Systems for Gravity Duals" group and, in 2019, received the institute's inaugural Award for Innovative Thinking. [2] In 2023, she became affiliated with the LMU Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, where she researched the role of locality and fine-tuning in quantum-mechanical foundations; [7] LMU ended its affiliation with Hossenfelder in 2025. [11]
Hossenfelder has published research on topics such as quantum gravity, [12] black holes, [13] and dark matter. [14]
Public engagement
Hossenfelder has written the popular-science blog Backreaction since 2006 and has contributed articles to Nature , New Scientist and Quanta Magazine . [6] Her first trade book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Basic Books, 2018), argues that an aesthetic preference for mathematically "beautiful" theories has hindered progress in fundamental physics. [15] Her follow-up, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions , was published by Viking in 2022, [16] covering topics such as "meaning of everything, including life and death, the origin of the universe, and the nature of reality ... God and spirituality, free will, universal consciousness, dualism (whether the mind is separate from the body), the Big Bang theory about the origin of the cosmos, the possible existence of parallel universes, and whether we live in a computer simulation" in a positive review, Kirkus Reviews stated that the book suggests that "many spiritual ideas are compatible with modern physics". [17]
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, Hossenfelder began focusing on YouTube content attempting to explain science in simple terms. [7] Jonathan Jarry stated that Hossenfelder was "gifted at explaining complexity [in her YouTube videos] without sacrificing nuance". [9] Hossenfelder's videos gained significant traction; by late 2023 she had reached over one million YouTube subscribers. [7] By April 2024, she had left full-time academic employment and became a full-time YouTuber. [18] As of 2025, her channel had reached 1.72 million subscribers and 293 million total views. [5] [8]
Hossenfelder is known for her strong criticism of modern academic physics research. [8] As of 2025, according to Jonathan Jarry, her output criticizing modern academic research generally garnered more popular engagement than her more educational efforts. [9] She has written op-eds in The Guardian and TheNew York Times critiquing particle physics and the search for hypothesized particles using colliders. [19] [20] In her videos, she attacks particle physics and aspects of theoretical physics research and accuses her colleagues of misleading the public, wasting research funds on "useless" papers, and 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. [9] [8] NPR described her views of modern physics research as "somewhat contrarian", [7] 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. [8]
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