Ever since the world's most celestially beautiful duo uncoupled 18 months ago, amid allegations of his drug-taking and her disregard for their children's privacy, there has been speculation as to who might supplant the ambrosial Angelina Jolie in Brad Pitt's affections.

Before the ink had dried on the divorce petition, gossip rags were falling over themselves to link the 54-year-old heart-throb to actresses such as Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson and 21-year-old British starlet Ella Purnell, currently in BBC drama Ordeal by Innocence. So it is only to be expected that Pitt's latest rumoured paramour, despite being virtually unknown, could comfortably give the former Mrs Jolie-Pitt a run for her money with her chiselled cheekbones and tumbling tresses.

Not that Neri Oxman, the raven-haired beauty in question, is likely to waste much head space on such frivolous considerations. For rather than a wide-eyed ingenue, Oxman is a 42-year-old professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the world's top-ranked university. She also happens to be an award-winning artist whose work has been displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Despite rarely having ventured outside the pristine waters of the Hollywood dating pool – before Jolie, he was married to Jennifer Aniston and he counts Gwyneth Paltrow and Juliette Lewis among his exes – Pitt is reportedly "smitten" with the Israeli-born professor, whom he is said to have met after seeking her expertise on an architectural project. The pairing is all the more extraordinary given that the actor has cultivated an image as something of a himbo, playing a series of delectable but dim characters in films such as Burn After Reading, as well as admitting to smoking "too much" marijuana.