John May completed almost all his PhD in Astrophysics in Jim Ring’s group at Imperial College in 1970-4. Formerly he’d completed his degree in Physics at Imperial. Dating back to 1968 he’d created a band known as ‘Smile’ with Tim Staffell and Roger Taylor, which carrying out a departure of Tim Stafell and using Freddie Mercury and John Deacon, elevated to obtain ‘Queen’. While using the launch within the ‘Queen II’ album in 1974, Queen began by getting an worldwide success, and John abandoned his PhD.
Regardless of the demands of Queen, John retained the romance of astronomy, and arrived on the scene regularly on Patrick Moore’s TV programme ‘Sky at Night’. Following printed interviews around 2006 by which he discussed attempting to complete his PhD, your mind of Astrophysics at Imperial in individuals days, Michael
Rowan-Robinson, contacted John to point he could come and discuss this. John responded enthusiastically anf the husband was re-registered for his PhD, under Michael’s supervision, from October first 2006. In individuals days John believed it might take him few years to accomplish, but he really printed his revised PhD on August second 2007. Furthermore to writing inside the work he’d transported out 1970-4, observations within the kinematics within the zodiacal dust cloud produced within the portion of Tenerife, John also needed to evaluate the focus on zodiacal dust with the intervening 33 years, which incorporated the invention within the zodiacal dust bands using the IRAS infrared astronomical satellite. Transporting out a viva on August 23rd, the revised thesis was approved on Sept 24th 2007, almost exactly 37 years after it absolutely was commenced.
John was hired a Visiting Investigator at Imperial on March first 2007 and looks after a wish to have zodiacal dust research.
He needed part within the workshop at Imperial in March 2008, where a brand-new instrument, ZODIACS, to obtain built combined with the College of Florida, was discussed. There’s in addition an exhibit on modelling of zodiacal emission within the Planck mission data. He’d given a chat on his concentrate on the conference “From IRAS to Herschel and Planck” kept in the Royal Astronomical Society, London, in this particular summer time time 2007, in recognition of Michael Rowan-Robinson’s 65th birthday. Brian’s talk ended getting a great animation within the solar system according to guitar music from his among his solo albums.
He continues his passion for astronomy and participation while using the Imperial Astrophysics Group.
His publications include:
Hicks, May, Reay, 1972, Nature 240, 401
Hicks, May, Reay, 1974, MNRAS 166, 439
‘Bang! The Entire Good status for your Universe’, John May, Patrick Moore, Chris Lintoff (Carlton Books 2006)
PhD Thesis, 2007, Imperial College London
‘A Village Lost determined:InchMoments within our Village” by T.R.Manley. An annotated tour within the 1850s volume of Stereo Photographs’ (Frances Lincoln subsequently subsequently subsequently, 2009) – early stereo photography is just one of Brian’s other passions. You can even examine out Brian’s stereo astro cards inside the London Stereoscopic Company site.