Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97
[July 28, 2025]
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned
marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his
music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other
universities, has died. He was 97.
Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death.
Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California
at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from
his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in
any format without any fee in return.
A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at
age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and
current events. His songs included "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," "The
Old Dope Peddler" (set to a tune reminiscent of "The Old Lamplighter"),
"Be Prepared" (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and "The Vatican Rag,"
in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the
Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: “Get down on your knees, fiddle
with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect,
genuflect, genuflect.”)
Accompanying himself on piano, he performed the songs in a colorful
style reminiscent of such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and
Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened
to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic
riffs on culture and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and
“Weird Al” Yankovic among others as an influence.
He mocked the forms of music he didn't like (modern folk songs, rock 'n'
roll and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation and
denounced discrimination.
But he attacked in such an erudite, even polite, manner that almost no
one objected.
"Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,"
musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed
set of Lehrer's songs, "The Remains of Tom Lehrer," and had featured
Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated "Dr. Demento" radio show.
Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three
dozen songs.
"When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I
didn't," Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare
interview. "I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a
piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit.
... It wasn't like I had writer's block."
He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs
in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at
coffeehouses around Cambridge, while he remained at Harvard to teach and
obtain a master's degree in math.
He cut his first record in 1953, "Songs by Tom Lehrer," which included
"I Wanna Go Back to Dixie," lampooning the attitudes of the Old South,
and the "Fight Fiercely, Harvard," suggesting how a prissy Harvard
blueblood might sing a football fight song.
After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of
his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP
called "More of Tom Lehrer" and a live recording called "An Evening
Wasted with Tom Lehrer," nominated for a Grammy for best comedy
performance (musical) in 1960.
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Musician Tom Lehrer sits beside the piano in his house in Santa
Cruz, Calif., on April 21, 2000. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
 But around the same time, he largely
quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some
writing and performing on the side.
Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public.
"I enjoyed it up to a point," he told The AP in 2000. "But to me,
going out and performing the concert every night when it was all
available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading
his novel every night."
He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964
television show "That Was the Week That Was," a groundbreaking
topical comedy show that anticipated "Saturday Night Live" a decade
later.
He released the songs the following year in an album titled "That
Was the Year That Was.” The material included "Who's Next?" that
ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb
... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it
was a bastion of segregation at the time.) "Pollution" takes a look
at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be
cleaned up.
He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show "The
Electric Company." He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who
had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise
for any of his satirical works.
His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue "Tomfoolery" and he
made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration
honoring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh.
Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a successful
necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's
Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his
family and walking through Central Park day or night.
After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and,
after receiving his master's degree, he spent several years
unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.
"I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many
years as possible, and I started on the thesis," he once said. "But
I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's
what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a Ph.D. and a
grad student at the same time."
He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to
escape the harsh New England winters.
From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of
his classes based on knowledge of his songs.
"But it's a real math class," he said at the time. "I don't do any
funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly."
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