Celebrity Ph.D.s
Time to toss every physics nerd stereotype you ever had:
Brian May, the guitarist and founding member of the legendary rock band Queen, earned his PhD in astronomy last year from Imperial College London. His PhD thesis A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud has just been co-published by Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd.
Since this is a political science blog, this opens the question of who is the biggest celebrity with a Ph.D. in political science. My vote is for Robert Vaughn. He was one of the Magnificent Seven, the Man from U.N.C.L.E., and he has a
Comments
Raymond (Bud) Duvall is Robert Duvall’s brother. Does that count?
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | August 1, 2008 08:22 AM
My vote is for Henry “The Kiss” Kissinger.
Posted by: Ethan | August 1, 2008 10:50 AM
Lee, you need to check your sourcing on that myth. It doesn’t count because they are not brothers.
Posted by: Eric L. | August 1, 2008 10:58 AM
Mea culpa, apparently. Okay, I’ll try again: Bud Duvall is NOT Robert Duvall’s brother, but they have the same last name. Does THAT count?
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | August 1, 2008 11:01 AM
Isn’t astronomy relating to zodiac signs and whether you’ll fall in love this week or not and that kind of stuff? Fail to see how that’s physics nerdy. Or hold any academic weight and relevance whatsoever.
;-)
Posted by: Filip | August 1, 2008 11:40 AM
Anyway, let’s not forget Woodrow Wilson.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | August 1, 2008 12:12 PM
My vote goes for Miuccia Prada, who got her Ph.D. in poli sci from the University of Milan.
Posted by: Brian | August 1, 2008 02:33 PM
Brian May, lead guitarist for Queen, has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, completed 30 years after he started his doctoral program.
Posted by: micahjensen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.themonkeycage.org/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 1, 2008 04:46 PM
Greg Graffin, lead singer and songwriter of Bad religion has a PhD in Zoology from Cornell. his dissertation is entitled “Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology.”
not quite as famous in the Punk Rock PhD set is Milo Aukerman of the Descendants has a PhD in Biochemistry from the university of Wisconsin-Madison, dissertation topic “Analysis of Opaque-2 Function in Maize”
Posted by: BillCinSD | August 1, 2008 05:27 PM
IMDB says his degree is in communications.
Posted by: LJ | August 2, 2008 02:54 PM
There must be something rebellious about PhD’s that attracts punk rockers: Bryan “Dexter” Holland, singer for The Offspring, was a PhD candidate in microbiology at USC but never ultimately finished it.
Posted by: patrick | August 3, 2008 12:15 AM
Robert Vaughn’s Ph.D. is only in Communications, but he did his undergrad at the University of Minnesota, where Professor Duvall is the chair of the Political Science Department.
Posted by: Antwerp | August 4, 2008 01:36 PM
In the category of “famous” Ph.D . candidates, I nominate Jessica Trisko (Miss Earth 2007, McGill) and Brooke Ellison (subject of the TV movie, The Brooke Ellison Story on A&E, Stony Brook).
Posted by: Reader of trashy celebrity mags | August 5, 2008 12:26 PM