Brian May Breaks the Mold as Both ‘Rock Star’ and ‘Rocket Scientist’
By Bob Granath
When a person is called a “rocket scientist,” it can be referring to someone who supports space exploration, or it can simply mean he or she is very intelligent. A “rock star” usually refers to a member of a successful musical band or someone highly renowned in a particular field. No one would be considered both – right?
Consider Dr. Brian May.
May is the world-renowned lead guitarist for the legendary British rock band, Queen. Having earned a doctorate in astrophysics, he is working closely with NASA reviewing data returned from the deep-space probe, New Horizons. Launched in 2006, the spacecraft flew past the planet Pluto in 2015 and now is traveling through the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system.
Born July 19, 1947 in the Hampton section of London, Brian May is the only child of Ruth and Harold May. As a teenager growing up in the 1960s he enjoyed music by groups such as The Beatles and wanted to learn to play the electric guitar. But the instruments were expensive.
May and his father, an electronics engineer, decided to build one.
Between 1963 and 1965, they cut the body of the guitar from an old oak tabletop. The neck was hewn from a hundred-year-old mahogany fireplace mantel. They filled wormholes in the wood with matchsticks. May explains that parts, such as the electronic pick-ups, switches and strings cost about £9. The result he calls the “Red Special.” Over the years, May has been regarded as a brilliant musician identified with the distinct sounds created by this guitar.
Before his musical career began, May studied at Imperial College in London, graduating with honors in 1968, earning a bachelor’s degree in physics.
Beginning in 1970, May worked on a doctorate at Imperial College, studying the heady subject of “reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the solar system.” At about the same time, he began to have success with a rock band and abandoned his doctoral studies in 1974.
May co-founded Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor, having previously performed with Taylor in the band, Smile, while at the university. Within five years of band’s 1970 formation and the recruitment of bass player John Deacon, Queen became one of the most successful rock groups in the world with smash hits such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are The Champions.” May wrote several of the band’s songs including “We Will Rock You.”
Following Mercury’s death in 1991, Queen went on hiatus for several years. Since 2011, May and drummer Roger Taylor have teamed with vocalist Adam Lambert to continue performances as Queen + Adam Lambert.
Widely respected for his efforts beyond his work as a musical performer with Queen, in 2005 Queen Elizabeth II appointed May to the title of Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. A title of chivalry, presented to honor his “services to the music industry and for charity work.” In addition to his success as a musician and astrophysicist, May is an advocate for animal rights and served as a vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
While Queen was taking a break, May returned to Imperial College in August 2007 to continue work on his Ph.D. Professors approved his thesis, “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” in September 2007, some 37 years after he began. May graduated at an awards ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in May 2008.
In 2014, May co-founded Asteroid Day with Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart and others. Established as a global awareness campaign, Asteroid Day’s goal is to bring people together to study asteroids and what can be done to protect Earth from an impact.
In the summer of 2015, May joined the NASA team as they studied the first results from the mission of the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past the planet Pluto.
Click here to read more about New Horizons.
The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas developed the New Horizons interplanetary space probe for NASA. Dr. Alan Stern of SwRI leads the team as New Horizon’s principal investigator.
At a NASA news conference during the Pluto flyby on July 17, 2015, Stern introduced May as a New Horizons science team collaborator. May told agency officials that he felt awed by the opportunity to meet the team and sift through images and other Pluto system data.
“You have inspired the world,” he said during the briefing at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
On Dec. 31, 2018 and Jan. 1, 2019, May returned, attending the watch party for the New Horizons flyby into the Kuiper Belt. He also created the first stereoanaglyph images of the Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, photographed by the spacecraft. Stereoanaglyph and stereoscopicsis are techniques for creating or enhancing images with the illusion of depth or three-dimensions.
During the New Year’s event, as New Horizons achieved the most distant spacecraft flyby in history, May performed his song celebrating the 12-year journey of the probe. It is a “rock star” and “rocket scientist’s” personal tribute to the NASA mission.
“Limitless wonders in a never-ending sky,” he sang. “Somewhere in the distance, a wonder will appear. One day New Horizons will be very, very near.”
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