Beauty meets brains in the bright white light of the lab

Science is sexy. How else do you explain so many beautiful women and socialites pursuing the hard sciences these days? Hollywood sex bomb Talulah Riley has just been dubbed the world's sexiest quantum physicist after being accepted by the California Institute of Technology. But it's a bit of an exaggeration. It's not like she is getting a PhD in the subject.

Riley has a way to go before she can match Yvonne Lui Lai-kwan (pictured), famous for being a one-time favourite female friend of Chinese Estates Holdings tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung. At one point, Lui was pursuing a PhD in chemistry at the no less prestigious Imperial College London. The brainy beauty specialised in neutron diffraction and hydration structure. Don't ask me what they are, I am just quoting from the titles of her published papers. We couldn't quite confirm whether she managed to complete her study, but Lui has gone further than any of us half-literate hacks in this office.