In reply to Font combination for scientific PhD thesis:
If this were an advertising job designed to grab peoples' attention on casual inspection, such charmingly decorative fonts might be just the thing. OTOH, a PhD thesis generally has a captive audience already, and in any case is intended to convince people by virtue of its content, not its typography.
What you want here is something that (a) is comfortably readable, (b) looks professional, and (c) doesn't get in the way of the content. IMO anything else is not only superfluous, but counterproductive.
When typesetting book or academic text – or anything where the content is the critical aspect – the ideal font is one which the reader doesn't even consciously notice, so long as it accomplishes (a), (b) and (c) as noted above. Any 'message' that the fonts convey should be strictly subconscious.
(I've heard more than one professional say that when they see overtly beautiful fonts in resumes or academic work, their immediate thought is "OK, what's the author trying to hide?")
For the body text, I definitely think serif type is called for. (I know some people challenge the theory that serif types are easier to read in running text, but I'm a firm believer in that particular orthodoxy.)