Brian May regularly plays to adoring audiences who hang on his every note but there was a time when he was banned from playing his guitar. The 77-year-old Queen legend admitted his school, Hampton Grammar, were not a fan of his instrument of choice forcing he and others to hide behind the bike sheds. “Music was my friend from a very young age, but music at school wasn’t a very good experience for me; we were forced to listen to classical music and told what to think of it. We used to hide round the back of the cycle sheds with our guitars, which were not allowed at school,” he admitted in a 2006 interview with The Independent.

Thankfully things improved for the aspiring rock star when he went to Imperial College London to study physics and mathematics as he got to book not only another guitar legend but also play in front of his peers with his own bands. “When I was on the Entertainments Committee, I booked Jimi Hendrix. Later, Queen played that same hall, and we got our first review, in Disc,” he explained.

“We were able to book the Albert Hall for charity, and got Hendrix, the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band, Free and Spooky Tooth. Smile, my student band, opened the show,” he recalled.

Brian continued with his studies in the early days of Queen moving from his BA to a PhD. However in 1972 he quit the world of academia for music.

“(It) was a big risk, but when a certain door opens, you either walk through it or you don’t. It won’t open again,” he said.

After a 33-year break in which he conquered the charts with Queen, he re-registered for his PhD in 2006 and successfully completed it in 2007 earning him the prefix Dr before his name.

He straddles the worlds of music and science nowadays and just last week he was in Germany where he was part of the the Science team for the HERA mission Fly-By of Mars and its tiny moon Deimos – the smaller of Mars’ two natural satellites. Thrilled as they managed to capture images of Deimos he excitedly posted video and images to his Instagram.

“This was the moment when the first beautiful image of Deimos and its parent planet appeared on our screens in the HERA control centre last night… Very emotional! And that is the first time Deimos has been seen from this angle from just 1000km away.

“Historic moment!! More soon!!! Notice Deimos is very dark – actually blacker than coal – so it almost looks like a silhouette – but by adjusting exposures we will see some detail on it,” he wrote.