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Comment by seccess | Hacker News Reader

A bit tangential, but this reminded me of Dexter Holland [0] the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Offspring. He went on to get a PhD in molecular biology (not an honorary one) and publish various papers about HIV.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland

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Note that he was already a PhD candidate went he met success with the Offspring. The same could be said of Brian May with astrophysics and Queen.

James Williamson (one of the guitarists of Iggy Pop & The Stooges) retrained as an Electrical Engineer, and ended up as Vice President of Technical Standards at Sony working on Blu-ray.

If you've read anything about what they were like as a band that's quite a career path!

There's also Brian Cox, who was in 90s pop band D:Ream and is now professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_%28physicist%29

Action movie star Dolph Lundgren is also super educated, with a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology and a master's in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolph_Lundgren

Greg Graffin of Bad Religion has a PhD in zoology, certainly after he began the band in high school. Something about SoCal punks. His dissertation is of course "Evolution and Religion: Questioning the Beliefs of the World's Eminent Evolutionists"

This info adds interest to song "The Kids Aren't Alright" , if he is doubly-accomplished but his childhood friends all burned out. Apparently Dexter did inspire/write the song: http://www.mtv.com/news/504023/offspring-rock-back-to-basics...

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