He achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of the rock band Queen, which he co-founded with singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor.

[27] Following his graduation, May received a personal invitation from Sir Bernard Lovell to work at the Jodrell Bank Observatory while continuing to prepare his doctorate.

On some of his songs, he sings the lead vocals, most notably the first verse of "Who Wants to Live Forever", the final verse of "Mother Love", the middle eight on "I Want It All" and "Flash's Theme", and full lead vocals on "Some Day One Day", "She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettoes)", "'39", "Good Company", "Long Away", "All Dead, All Dead", "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" and "Sail Away Sweet Sister" .

Also in 1986, May worked with actress Anita Dobson on her first album, most noted for the song "Anyone Can Fall in Love", which added lyrics to the EastEnders theme tune and reached number four on the UK Singles Chart in August 1986.

In the aftermath of the November 1991 death of Mercury, May chose to deal with his grief by committing himself as fully as possible to work, first by finishing his solo album, Back to the Light,[46] and then touring worldwide to promote it.

A version with Freddie Mercury's vocals was later released on the Queen album Made in Heaven and won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically in 1996.

He produced and arranged her debut studio album Anthems (2010), a follow-up to her extended play Wicked in Rock (2008), as well as appearing with Ellis at many public performances—playing guitar alongside her.

On 20 May 2009, May and Queen bandmate Roger Taylor performed "We Are the Champions" live on the season finale of American Idol with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert providing a vocal duet.

[74][75] On 15 August 2006, May confirmed through his website and fan club that Queen + Paul Rodgers would begin producing their first studio album in October, to be recorded at a "secret location".

[84][85] A long-time fan of the group, May performed three songs onstage with The Darkness, including Queen's "Tie Your Mother Down", at the Hammersmith Apollo on their subsequent "comeback" tour.

[101][102] On 16 September 2012, May appeared at the Sunflower Jam charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall, performing alongside bassist John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin), drummer Ian Paice (of Deep Purple), and vocalists Bruce Dickinson (of Iron Maiden) and Alice Cooper.

[111] Not long after performing with American Idol finalists Kris Allen and Adam Lambert during the programme's season finale in 2009, May and Taylor began contemplating the future of Queen after the group's amicable split with frontman Paul Rodgers.

[89] Speculation regarding collaboration with Lambert soon arose, with the three formally announcing a short summer tour of Europe in 2012, including three dates at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, as well as shows in Ukraine, Russia and Poland.

This included closing the Isle of Wight Festival in England on 12 June where they performed "Who Wants to Live Forever" as a tribute to the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida earlier that day.

[128] Performing a three-song set, May appeared in front of the Victoria Memorial monument as they opened with "We Will Rock You" which had been introduced in a comedy segment where the Queen and Paddington Bear tapped their tea cups to the beat of the song.

[145]In addition to using his home-made guitar he prefers to use coins (especially a sixpence from the farewell proof set of 1970), instead of a more traditional plastic plectrum, because he feels their rigidity gives him more control in playing.

May explored a wide variety of styles in guitar, including: sweep picking ("Was It All Worth It" "Chinese Torture"); tremolo ("Brighton Rock", "Stone Cold Crazy", "Death on Two Legs", "Sweet Lady", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Get Down Make Love", "Dragon Attack"); tapping ("Bijou", "It's Late", "Resurrection", "Cyborg", "Rain Must Fall", "Business", "China Belle", "I Was Born To Love You"); slide guitar ("Drowse", "Tie Your Mother Down"); Hendrix sounding licks ("Liar", "Brighton Rock"); tape-delay ("Brighton Rock", "White Man"); and melodic sequences ("Bohemian Rhapsody", "Killer Queen", "These Are the Days of Our Lives").

Some of his solos and orchestral parts were composed by Freddie Mercury, who then asked May to bring them to life ("Bicycle Race", "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon", "Killer Queen", "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy").

From 1979 onwards, he also played synthesisers, organ ("Wedding March",[168] "Let Me Live") and programmed drum-machines for both Queen and outside projects (such as producing other artists and his own solo records).

Occasionally, May would also record on other string instruments such as harp (one chord per take, then copied and pasted by the engineer to make it sound like a continuous performance) and bass (on some demos and many songs in his solo career, and the Queen + Paul Rodgers album).

When Queen began to have international success in 1974, he abandoned his doctoral studies, but nonetheless co-authored two peer-reviewed research papers,[173][174] which were based on his observations at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife.

[143][187] In 2014, May co-founded Asteroid Day with Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, B612 Foundation COO Danica Remy and German filmmaker Grigorij Richters.

[189] During the New Horizons Pluto flyby NASA press conference held on 17 July 2015 at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, May was introduced as a science team collaborator.

[192] As part of May's role as a collaborator with NASA's science team on the New Horizons mission, he worked on the first stereoanaglyph based on images of (486958) Arrokoth that were captured by the spacecraft.

[224] Though a Conservative Party voter most of his life,[225] he has stated that their policies on fox hunting and the culling of badgers meant he did not vote for them in the 2010 UK general election.

[229] In July 2015, May criticised UK Prime Minister David Cameron for giving Members of Parliament a free vote on amending the ban on fox hunting in England and Wales.

May shared an article on Twitter by The Independent headlined "Jeremy Corbyn says Fox hunting is 'barbarity' and pledges to keep it banned"[232] and captioned it: "Well, I guess that just about clinches it !!

[234] In the run-up to the 2019 United Kingdom general election May criticised what he saw as the poor conduct of the media and declined to endorse either candidate, stating that he found it "impossible" to vote for either Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson.

[252] May made a significant technical contribution to the book to accompany the exhibition 'Stereoscopic Photographs of Pablo Picasso by Robert Mouzillat', held at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, from February to June 2014.

The purchase of his first card in 1973 started May on a lifelong and worldwide search for Les Diableries,[253] which are stereoscopic photographs depicting scenes of daily life in Hell.