Derek Muller Height, Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Derek Muller

• Derek Muller’s parents are originally from South Africa.

• He was born in Australia, where the family shifted as his father worked as an engineer at a paper and pulp company.

• He acted as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol on stage when he was 11.
  

  Derek Muller (circled) as Tiny Tim in a play

• He received the Governor General Bronze Academic Medal for academic excellence in 2000, as he was the top student among the 425 International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma graduates.

• He wished to be a filmmaker but did not choose that career option as he could not associate a definite academic path with it.

• He received the chancellor’s scholarship for all the years (2000-2004) of his engineering graduation at the Queen’s University in Canada.

• He created two documentary films for the drama department of Queen’s University in 2003-2004.

• He graduated at an average of 90 per cent, in the top 15th position among the 625 engineering graduates.

• He received the Australian Postgraduate Award, a scholarship given to students with exceptional research potential.

• He was the Physics Laboratory Demonstrator and Tutor in second-year computational and experimental labs at the University of Sydney.

• While doing his PhD (2005-2008) at the University of Sydney, he was the first author to publish five papers in internationally refereed journals and seven papers in internationally refereed conference proceedings.

• His dissertation for his PhD was on Designing Effective Multimedia For Physics Education.

• He was the project coordinator for facilitating a grant at the University of Sydney to make multimedia for high school physics topics from 2005 to 2008.

• As a project coordinator and filmmaker at the University of Sydney from 2005 to 2008, he created films for the physics modules of Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) Examinations. He distributed those DVDs across schools in Australia.

• He worked as a Physics teacher (2006-2013) for grade 11 and 12 students at Matrix Education, Sydney. He developed teaching resources and educational videos for teaching the students.

• He has been an honorary member of one of the oldest and most prestigious Honor societies, Sigma Xi at Cornell University since 2014.

• He has been the creative director and CEO of ThoughtWorks, Sydney, since 2010, creating the first YouTube channel Veritasium and providing educational consultancy.

• His YouTube channel, Veritasium (meaning an element of truth, formed by combining the Latin word, veritas (truth) and -ium, the suffix for a metal element) is a science educational channel showing videos of experiments, concept discussions, dramatisations and interviews with experts.

• He has two other YouTube channels, 2veritasium (an isotope of truth) and Sciencium (an element of knowledge).

• Veritasium has a subscriber base of over 15 million (as of April 2024).

• He was also the Head of Science at Matrix Education, Sydney from 2008 to 2012. He implemented a new CRM database and was also responsible for the marketing.

• He is also an honorary inductee of the Utah Science Teaching Association in 2019.

• He gained more popularity as a researcher and presenter of the Why Guy segment of the Breakfast program aired on Channel Ten.

• Derek was the speaker at the TEDxSydney in 2012 (The Key to Effective Educational Science Videos) and 2013.
  

  Derek Muller at TEDxSydney 2013

• He has given keynote speeches at various conferences and hosted several education summits.

• He was one of the three hosts of Catalyst on The Road, a television series, in 2013.

• He appeared as an engineering expert, researcher, and presenter on ancient Egypt, monuments, and technology on a program, Ancient Impossible, broadcasted on the History Channel in 2014.

• He was the researcher, writer, and host of the award-winning documentary series Uranium – Twisting the Dragon’s Tail (2015), broadcast on PBS Network.
  

  Derek Muller on the poster of the documentary Uranium – Twisting the Dragon’s Tail

• In 2015, Derek Muller hosted a backstage show live before the Nobel Peace Prize Concert.

• He has also been featured on the BBC Show, QI, and Discovery television show, You Have Been Warned.

• He is also the founder of Snatoms, a teacher’s aid and a learning resource containing magnetic atoms that can be put together to form various shapes of molecules.
  

  Derek Muller with the Snatoms