You may call him Dr. Brian May:
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.
Here's Dr. May in his own words on his soapbox:
Yes. It's done, and after about 37 years, I am finally a doctor. The oral examination of my thesis, and of me, lasted about 3 hours, and then I retired with Prof Rowan-Robinson, for a few moments, for my two examiners to confer. After only a couple of minutes they called me back into the room and offered their hands in congratulations. Yes, my category was number 2. I understand pretty much nobody gets a 1st category - which is "This is perfect - here's your PhD."
Mine is "We like it. Make these adjustments, and it's yours."
Been there. Done that. I wonder what was more nerve-wracking: playing in front of thousands of fans or defending the dissertation. In any case: congratulations Dr. May!