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Happy Birthday, Sir Brian May, lead guitarist and astrophysicist [1]

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Date: 2025-07-19

Happy 78th Birthday to Sir Brian May, born 19 July 1947, virtuoso musician and astrophysicist.

Many of us have known Brian May as the lead guitarist, songwriter and backing vocalist of the rock band Queen, and for his Newton-like hair, but did you know that -

May graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc degree in math and physics.

He worked on his PhD in astrophysics from 1970 to 1974, which he set aside as his musical career took off. He went back to school in 2006, finished his research work and was awarded the doctorate degree in 2007!

In recent years, May has collaborated with NASA on the New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx and DART missions, with JAXA on Hayabusa2 and with ESA on the Hera mission. Among his many contributions, he is known for facilitating the study of asteroids and planets using stereography.

So, let’s celebrate his birthday by savoring some of his famous works.

Stereographs

First, the image pair posted above is a stereo image of his portrait from his website. It can be viewed in 3D either crossed- eyed or by staring behind the image at infinity or with a stereoscope.

May has created stereo images for NASA, ESA and JAXA for various asteroids and other celestial objects.

Here is a pair of stereoscopic images of the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam, taken from the NASA Lucy spacecraft on Nov 1, 2023 and expertly stereo-processed by Dr. Brian May and Claudia Manzoni.

To view the 3D image, either relax the axes of your eyes, as if staring through the screen to infinity (so that you are looking at the left image with your left eye and the right image with your right eye) or use a stereoscope.

Here are stereo images of asteroid Ryugu as observed by the JAXA Hayabusa2 mission in 2019 and processed by Dr. Brian May and Claudia Manzoni. The first stereo image pair can be viewed by staring at infinity, the 2nd cross-eyed.

Books

Dr. May is also a prolific writer with a long list of books he has authored or co-authored — on music of course and on astrophysics and stereography. Here is a small sample -

Science Communicator

And Dr. May is a gifted speaker and science communicator. At the Starmus IV festival in Yerevan, Armenia in September 2022, May was awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

Here is a video from ESA of Brian May introducing the Hera mission.

Music

Now let’s enjoy some of Brian’s music —

This is Brian May on the guitar playing to Hans Zimmer’s “Inception” at “The event, Beyond The Horizon – A Tribute to Stephen Hawking” at the third annual Starmus Festival held in Tenerife and La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain in 2016.

There are too many choices for his guitar solo performances to choose from. Here are a few —

And a more contemporary short video —

Epilogue

Now let’s hear your favorite songs, moments and memories of Brian May.

Let’s take a few moments off the ugly news cycle in these times of naked fascism and pay tribute to one of the living legends of our times.

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