In 1953, a Harvard graduate student paid to record an album of his own comic songs and sold it by mail order. Songs by Tom Lehrer sold half a million copies and made him a cult star, with numbers about poisoning pigeons in a park and an old dope peddler. Lehrer stopped performing in public in 1972 and spent the rest of his working life teaching mathematics. He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 26, 2025, his friend David Herder said. He was 97.
A prodigy at Harvard
Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928, and entered Harvard at 15. He studied mathematics there and began writing songs to entertain friends, including “Fight Fiercely, Harvard”, a parody football song from 1945 that is still played at the university’s games. He worked at the Los Alamos laboratory and served in the army before returning to academic life.
The songs
Lehrer’s songs set wicked lyrics to cheerful piano tunes. “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, “The Masochism Tango” and “Be Prepared”, which mocked the Boy Scouts, were followed in the 1960s by political satire written for the American version of That Was the Week That Was: “Who’s Next?” about nuclear proliferation, “National Brotherhood Week” and “The Vatican Rag”. His song “The Elements”, which sets the names of the chemical elements to a tune by Gilbert and Sullivan, is still taught in classrooms.
Leaving it behind
After 1972 Lehrer largely stopped writing and performing, apart from songs for the children’s programme The Electric Company, and taught mathematics and musical theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for decades. Randy Newman and “Weird Al” Yankovic both cited him as an influence. In 2020 he announced that all of his songs and lyrics were in the public domain, free for anyone to use.
Lehrer famously said that political satire had become obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and he spent the next half-century proving he meant it.