11 Celebrities Who Have a PhD

Actor Robert Vaughn made became famous for playing Napoleon Solo in the American series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on NBC between 1964 and 1968. Two years later, in 1970, he got a PhD in communications from the University of Southern California. He is one of the few celebrities to have earned a PhD in the same area of specialty that they work in, drama. Vaughn published his dissertation in a book form two years after getting his PhD. It is called Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting.

Singer, songwriter… research biochemist. Punk’s not dead – it’s just dressed in a white coat, spending time in a research laboratory at an institution of higher education. Milo Aukerman, the lead singer of punk band The Descendents, finds himself in between the stage and the lab, and has done so for his entire career. The band’s first studio album was entitled Milo Goes To College, as Aukerman had made the decision to start studying biology at the University of California, when the band was working on the album. He stayed at UC San Diego for a couple more years, eventually earning his PhD in biology for a dissertation entitled “Analysis of Opaque-2 Function in Maize.” Aukerman continued with a stint doing postdoctoral research in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He now works as a plant researcher at DuPont, and manages to keep both passions alive.