NileRed

This article is about the Canadian YouTuber. For the stain, see Nile red.

Nigel Braun (born September 7, 1991), known professionally as NileRed, is a Canadian YouTuber known for his chemistry-related videos covering chemical reactions and compounds. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology.^[2][3]

NileRed
Personal information
Born	Nigel Braun (1991-09-07) September 7, 1991 (age 34) Montreal, Quebec
Education	McGill University (BS)
Signature
Website	nile.red
YouTube information
Channels	NileRed NileRed 2 NileBlue
Years active	2014–present
Genre	Educational entertainment
Subscribers	10 million (main channel) 4.63 million (NileRed 2) 3.06 million (NileBlue) 17.8 million (combined)[a][1]
Views	3.96 billion (main channel) 23.4 million (NileRed 2) 378.16 million (NileBlue) 4.5 billion (combined)[b][1]
Last updated: June 30, 2025

Early life

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 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]

Career

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]

Braun (second from the right) with William Osman (far right) and Allen Pan (far left) at Open Sauce in 2024

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]

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Result	Ref.
2020	Streamy Awards	Learning and Education	Nominated	[14]

Notes

1. Subscribers, broken down by channel:
   10 million (NileRed)
   4.63 million (NileRed 2)
   2.89 million (NileBlue)
   439,000 (NileRed Extra)
   188,000 (NileRed en Español)
2. Views, broken down by channel:
   3.8 billion (NileRed)
   37.37 million (NileRed 2)
   412.3 million (NileBlue)
   114.94 million (NileRed Extra)
   56.91 million (NileRed en Español)