Nerds Are Suddenly Studly

Rob Kremer was once just an innocuous ecologist scanning satellite photos at Colorado State University.

Today he’s studly Dr. March.

Kremer is one of a dozen Studmuffins for Science - good-looking male scientists who posed for a 1996 calendar.

The pinup Ph.D.s did it for charity, and to prove that beneath those nerdy pocket protectors and lab coats, you might find washboard abs, iron quads and a sense of humor, too.

The calendar’s color photo for March shows the lean, muscular Kremer posing in Lory State Park near Fort Collins with his mountain bike. He’s wearing a tank top and skin-tight bike shorts, an earring and long curly dark hair.

“No G-strings,” Dr. March … er, Kremer, 33, said.

Studmuffins is the work of New York-based journalist Karen Hopkin, who produces National Public Radio’s Science Friday. Single and 32, she admits to developing the calendar “so that I myself could meet guys.”

Hopkin sought her hunks through a science humor journal and the Internet with the line, “If you have a Y chromosome and a Ph.D., you could be Dr. December!”

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Scripps-McClatchy Western Service