Absolutely true. He had to give up finishing his Ph.D. Studies when Queen got huge in the early '70's. He finished his astrophysics Ph.D. in 2007. He has written several other astronomy books for the non- technical reader, and appears frequently on a long-running weekly BBC TV astronomy show called "The Sky At Night" hosted for many years by his dear friend the late Sir Patrick Moore./p>
There is a very humorous song about this on YouTube which you can find by searching "Radial Velocities of the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, a song for Brian May" (don't know how to post YouTube links).
He also is a world-class expert on 3D photography, having published a book with another soon forthcoming.
Of course he still plays guitar. Pretty well, I'd say.