Everyone may know him as the legendary guitarist of the famous rock band Queen, but he is a scientist who double majored in physics and mathematics at Imperial College and graduated first in mathematics.
Brian May was born on July 19, 1947 in Hampton, England, the only child of a family of electrical engineers. After the war, May’s father and mother worked in a factory building landing systems for Concorde fighter jets. But for her father, this was not enough. Turning the garage of their house into a workshop, May’s father is a prolific builder who secretly designs and builds electric vehicles, which were just becoming popular at the time.
- How can you tell if a person is lying? Clues that can give away a lie
- The Story of Jason Padgett, a Math Genius Transformed by an Attack
Growing up in such an environment, it is not surprising that little May is interested in electronics and physics. But the family has another passion besides electronics: music. Her father, who played the piano and banjo, was a folk music enthusiast, and little May grew up listening to the music of the period. “My parents taught me the passion of physics, the aesthetics of music and the necessity of discipline and regular study,” she would later say. Her success at school was outstanding.
Brian May’s music career began when his father bought him an acoustic guitar designed for folk music for his birthday. Soon after, Brian May managed to draw electricity to his acoustic guitar by playing around with its system and painted it red to create the guitar he named “Red Special”. Brian May realized this in his role model Jimi Hendrix: Jimi wasn’t playing his guitar, he was talking to it. In his solos, he would say something to the guitar and the guitar would respond. He starts talking to his guitar for hours to be like him. In doing so, every time he plays his guitar, he tries to create unique melodies that don’t exist in the note intervals.
Physics or Music?
While his love of music is on one side, Brian May is more interested in physics. When Brian graduated top of his high school and was accepted with a scholarship to the physics department of Imperial College, the best school in Britain at the time, he headed to London, where both the science and music of the time were produced.
In the 1970s, the year he started university, Progressive, Psychedelic Rock bands such as Pink Floyd and Velvet Underground were in vogue and May was intrigued by them. Soon after, he formed his first band with friends he met at university: Smile
The group later disintegrates due to the intense pace of their studies. During this period, Brian makes close friends with his professors at the university and continues to study at the department with outstanding success. Because of his omnipresence, he becomes the subject of a joke among his friends that he is not human. He finishes physics in 3 years and ranks first in both math and physics. While doing all this, he also earned money by performing on stage as a guitarist. The undergraduate thesis he wrote was so successful that he was directly accepted for a PhD in astrophysics. While doing his PhD, he met Freddie Mercury, who would become his best friend in life.
Brian May starts playing with Freddie Mercury and is forced to choose between his two childhood passions: Rock music or astrophysics? As the new band Queen becomes famous, their concert tours increase. A tour with Mott the Hope, one of the most famous rock bands of the time, leads to a rift with Brian May’s family and the abandonment of his PhD.
The Queen dream is tragically interrupted at the height of their fame. Freddie Mercury dies of AIDS. Although the band does not break up, it is no longer the same. With songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, Under Pressure and We Will Rock You, whose melodies almost everyone recognizes, and legendary albums, Queen is slowly coming to an end.
Today, the band occasionally reunites for a single concert and actively supports the musical “We Will Rock You”. In the 2000s, Brian May returned to astrophysics, which he had interrupted due to his music career. He has written 4 papers investigating the structure of the Oort Cloud, with a keen interest in “the structure of light reflected from dust clumps in the outer reaches of the Solar System”. May graduated from Imperial College in May 2008 with a PhD and has been working as a research assistant at the Imperial Astrophysics Group since 2007.
