Source:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2062494.ece
From The Times
July 12, 2007
Rock star back at university again after 33 gap years
Simon de Bruxelles
Brian May, the multimillionaire guitarist who founded the rock group Queen,
has finally completed the PhD in astrophysics that he abandoned more than 30
years ago.
The 59-year-old composer of hits such as Fat Bottomed Girls and We Will Rock
You turned his back on the stars for international fame with Freddie Mercury
and his band. His thesis on interplanetary dust clouds lay gathering dust of
its own in the attic of his home in Surrey.
May’s interest in the subject was rekindled last year when he co-authored a
children’s science book with the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore. He discovered
that remarkably little research had been done in the intervening 33 years.
He dug out his old handwritten notes and spent nine months conducting
further research at Imperial College, London, where he had studied before
Queen hit the big time.
May revealed his achievement when he received an honorary doctorate at
Exeter University this week. He told students: “For the last nine months
I’ve done nothing except slave over my PhD, which is now written up, thank
God. But there are times when you really want to give up. There are times
when you go, ‘Why on earth did I take this on?’ ”
After the ceremony he said: “I worked on my thesis at Imperial from 1971 to
1974 when I had to give it up because Queen became a full-time thing. I kept
all my notes and I was able to find them in my loft and start working on
them again.”
Using a giant telescope in the Canary Islands, May was able to show for the
first time that dust clouds in the solar system are moving in the same
direction as the planets. He will receive his PhD next May, provided that
his thesis is approved by assessors.
Abigail Smith, a spokeswoman for Imperial College, said: “People are aware
he is here and there is a feeling it is pretty cool that he has come back to
finish his PhD, even if he has not been hugely visible.”
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Salvatore Scifo,
Lecturer in Community Media
Media Information & Communication
Department of Applied Social Sciences
London Metropolitan University
Ladbroke House, Room LH 328
62-66 Highbury Grove
London N5 2AD
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