Queen rocker finally awarded PhD, 30 years on

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2007

LONDON (AFP) — Queen guitarist Brian May was on Thursday awarded a doctorate, more than 30 years after he first began studying a highly specialised area of astronomy.

May first started his thesis -- titled, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" -- at Imperial College London in 1974, but abandoned it when Queen's prospects began to brighten.

He finally dusted off his notes last year and handed in his 48,000-word doctoral thesis about three weeks ago to Imperial's head of astrophysics Professor Paul Nandra.

"I'm feeling rather joyful. I cannot tell you how much of a weight off the mind it is," May said after his assessors approved of his thesis and he passed an oral exam.

"What matters is that this stands up in the future and that there are no...