Hank Green

William Henry Green II (born May 5, 1980) is an American YouTuber, science communicator, novelist, and entrepreneur.

He produces the YouTube channel Vlogbrothers with his older brother, author John Green, and hosts the educational YouTube channels Crash Course and SciShow.

He has advocated for and organized social activism, created and hosted a number of other YouTube channels and podcasts, released music albums, and amassed a large following on TikTok.

With his brother John, Hank co-created VidCon, the world's largest conference about online videos, and the Project for Awesome, an annual online charity event, as well as the now-defunct conferences NerdCon: Stories, focused on storytelling, and PodCon, focused on podcasts.

William Henry Green II was born on May 5, 1980, to Mike and Sydney Green in Birmingham, Alabama, but his family soon moved to Orlando, Florida, where he was raised.

His first project, the "Mars Exploration Page", in 1994, experienced minor success on the heels of the Mars Pathfinder Mission.

A later website, IHateI4.com, which was about Green's dislike for Interstate 4, a widely unpopular highway among Floridians, brought press from local news channels and the Orlando Sentinel.

Green continued as a web developer after moving to Montana for graduate school, focusing on developing websites for educational institutions (including the University of Montana) and environmental nonprofit organizations.

While in graduate school, Green created "EcoGeek", a blog focusing on technological advancements that benefit the environment.

Starting as a class project, EcoGeek evolved into a major environmental publication.

It caught the attention of Time, where it was described as "porn for hardcore science, tech and enviro freaks".

Writing about environmental issues, Green has been published on numerous environmental blogs, including Treehugger.com, Yahoo! Green, The National Geographic Green Guide, Scientific American, The Weather Channel, Planet Green, NPR, and in The New York Times.

He graduated from Winter Park High School in 1998.

During the mid-2000s, Green wrote regularly for Mental Floss and co-authored one of their books, Mental Floss: Scatterbrained.

He then earned a B.S. in biochemistry from Eckerd College in 2002 and a M.S. in environmental studies from the University of Montana.

His master's thesis was titled "Of Both Worlds: How the Personal Computer and the Environmental Movement Change Everything".

Throughout high school and college, Green created and designed websites for himself and local clients.

From January 1 to December 31, 2007, Hank Green and his brother John ran a video blog project titled Brotherhood 2.0.

The original project ran every weekday for the entire year, with the premise that the brothers would cease all text-based ("textual") communication for the year and instead converse by daily video blogs, made available to the public via their YouTube channel Vlogbrothers and on their website.

In 2008, John and Hank met up with their fans, known as "Nerdfighters".

The first gathering was a last-minute decision, but despite the three-day notice, nearly 100 people attended.

In August, John and Hank were invited to the Google office in Chicago to talk about the project.

That same day, they filled the Harold Washington Library with about 400 young adults.

After John's book tour for his third novel, Paper Towns, the brothers went on a national tour in November.

With events in 17 different cities, they met Nerdfighters at local libraries and community centers.

During this tour, Hank released his first album of Nerdfighter-themed songs, titled So Jokes.

The Green brothers have been interviewed on PotterCast, and have been recurring keynote speakers at the Harry Potter fan convention LeakyCon.

The Brotherhood 2.0 project succeeded in its original mission: the brothers have come to communicate more thoroughly with each other, and have a larger influence in each other's lives than they did before the project.

The brothers talked on the phone once or twice a year before Brotherhood 2.0, but, according to Hank's wife Katherine, they now "talk almost every day".

John and Hank continued to post vlogs every Tuesday and Friday on their channel.

Their video topics vary from explanations of current events, reunion videos, joke videos, rant videos, thoughts from various places, Question Tuesdays, and random topics.

As of May 19, 2023, they have posted over 2,100 videos.

The channel has more than 3.5 million subscribers, and its videos have been watched over 932,000,000 times.

In light of Hank's May 2023 Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, the brothers announced that videos might not be released with their usual regularity, and for the first time abandoned their four-minute limit for non-educational videos to save time in making them as Hank underwent chemotherapy treatment and John took on some of Hank's responsibilities at Complexly and DFTBA Records.

He is the co-creator of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012–2013), an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in the style of video blogs that was the first web series to win an Emmy.

He is also the co-founder of merchandise company DFTBA Records, crowdfunding platform Subbable (acquired by Patreon), game company DFTBA Games, and online video production company Pemberley Digital, which produces video blog adaptations of classic novels in the public domain.

Green is the founder of the environmental technology blog EcoGeek, which evolved into Complexly, an online video and audio production company of which he was the CEO until late 2023.

Green also hosts the podcasts Dear Hank & John and Delete This with his brother and wife respectively, along with the podcast SciShow Tangents.

Green's debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, was published on September 25, 2018; its sequel A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor was published on July 7, 2020.

Both novels debuted as New York Times Best Sellers.