Brian May, PhD

For us greasy kids who'd seriously argue stuff like this, one of the classic arguments about why so-and-so is such a great metal singer would be that he had 'studied opera'. Another doozy was a guitarist who'd studied 'classical' music.

Well, the ultimate showstopper in these Championship Vinyl-style debates for those of us who think Brian May is one of the Top Five Guitarists Of All Time was that he was an astrophysicist. Top that!

Point of fact, Queen took off and he never finished school. After realizing not much work had been done on the topic, Brian resurrected his doctoral thesis on dust clouds. All he's left to do is defend it, and all those erstwhile exaggerations will have become fact.