Tom Lehrer, the musical comedy legend, mathematician and political satirist, has died aged 97.
He passed away at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to his longtime friend David Herder. No cause of death was given.
Lehrer was much beloved for his humorous and often darkly satiric musical numbers such as ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’ and ‘The Vatican Rag’, which poked fun at mid-21st Century America, reaching the height of his fame in the 1950s and ’60s.
He would usually perform by accompanying himself on the piano in a light, Broadway show tunes style and a cheeky grin on his face. His style is best describe in his popular saying, “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.”
Toy Story music composer Randy Newman is among those to cite his influence on them, while he also had an impact on newer generations, with Daniel Radcliffe, who called Lehrer his hero and recited his complicated and much-loved song ‘The Elements’ during an interview on The Graham Norton Show. “Weird” Al Yankovic, another Lehrer fan, saw Radcliffe’s performance and based his decision to cast the Harry Potter star in his biopic on it.
Born a maths prodigy, Lehrer graduated from Harvard aged 19, beginning his life-long career in academia, which lasted well into his 70s. The New York City native soon began composing ditties for his friends, as he taught at the Ivy League university and worked towards a masters in mathematics.
After a spell in the army, he began to perform live and recorded albums such as Songs by Tom Lehrer, which savaged institutions such as his own Harvard. He was nominated for a Grammy in 1960 for Best Comedy Performance (Musical), but then quit to return to teaching.
While he occasionally performed in public and on television after this point, he primarily focused on teaching, which was more naturally comfortable for him. However, he did compose a song a week for That Was the Week That Was, an NBC topical comedy show that ran between 1963 and 1965.
The series, based on the popular BBC show of the same name, is considered a forefather of Saturday Night Live and other live comedy series. An album based on the series included scything songs such as the nuclear bomb-themed ‘Who’s Next’ and ‘Vatican Rag’, which pilloried the Catholic Church.
Lehrer later contributed to BBC series The Frost Report and wrote songs for PBS educational children’s series The Electric Company in the early 1970s.
He largely disappeared from public eyes in the 1970s and spent the rest of his life in academia, occasionally performing for students during musical theater classes, which he taught alongside mathematics. He taught at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley and the University of California, Santa Cruz, before retiring in 2001.
His best known song, ‘The Elements’, from 1959, is famous for naming all of the 102 known chemical elements of the time, arranged to the music of Gilbert and Sullivam’s ‘Major-General’s Song’.
