http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673683.ece

Snipet:

May is now making it clear that behind the facade of a rock demi-god 
there always lay a keen astronomer awaiting the chance to return to his 
unfinished thesis on the way light reflects from interplanetary dust 
particles.

He appears to have that chance. While working on the book, May has told 
senior astrophysicists he wants to complete his thesis and has persuaded 
them to assess it.

A major factor in that success was a research paper he published in 
1974, entitled An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust 
Particles, which remains a widely cited work.