Brian May built one of the most extraordinary dual careers in modern culture: stadium-filling rock guitarist and working astrophysicist.
Before Queen became one of the world’s most successful rock bands, May was already studying physics and astronomy at Imperial College London. His doctoral research focused on zodiacal dust — the cloud of tiny particles spread through the inner solar system. Music eventually took over, and his PhD work was put aside for more than three decades.
Then he went back. In 2007, May completed and submitted his doctorate at Imperial College. Imperial College records that his thesis, Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, returned to observations he had begun in the early 1970s and examined how dust in the solar system moves around the Sun.
That was not simply an honorary connection to science. May later became directly involved in planetary research. He and stereoscopy specialist Claudia Manzoni joined NASA’s OSIRIS-REx science team and created 3D views of asteroid Bennu from spacecraft imagery.
The work had a practical purpose. NASA says May and Manzoni formally joined the OSIRIS-REx team as collaborators to produce stereoscopic data products while scientists were selecting a sample-collection site on Bennu. After the asteroid material returned to Earth in 2023, May also helped create stereo images of the sampling hardware and recovered material.
May’s résumé belongs beside other Career News profiles including Dexter Holland’s combination of punk rock, molecular biology and aviation, Story Musgrave’s path from Marine mechanic to doctor to astronaut, and Eric Heiden’s journey from five Olympic gold medals to orthopedic surgery. In May’s case, the remarkable part is that the second career was not a celebrity side project. He returned to unfinished scientific work decades later, earned the doctorate, and then contributed to an active NASA asteroid mission.
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