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Telegraph - Brian May studies the stars for PhD

Brian May, the lead guitarist from the rock group Queen, has swapped learning riffs for studying the stars in order to complete a PhD.

The 60-year-old rock star, who has recently published a book on astronomy with Sir Patrick Moore, is going back to school to finish a thesis for Imperial College London.

The work will mark the completion of the studies he began before Queen found fame and become one of Britain’s greatest rock bands.

Right so then I wikied him (footnotes and links omitted):

May was born in Hampton, in Middlesex, and attended Hampton Grammar School (now Hampton School). He went on to study at the Imperial College London departments of Physics and Mathematics, and was part way through a Ph.D. programme at Imperial College, studying reflected light from interstellar dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System, when Queen became successful. He abandoned his physics doctorate - temporarily, as it later turned out - but did co-author two scientific research papers: MgI Emission in the Night-Sky Spectrum and An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles (Part I), which were based on Brian’s observations in Tenerife. As of July 2007, he has completed his Ph.D. thesis, and is awaiting review.

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