Biography:

Thomas Andrew Lehrer (/ˈlɛərər/; April 9, 1928 – July 26, 2025) was an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy and humorous, often political songs that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs often parodied popular musical forms, though they usually had original melodies. An exception is “The Elements“, in which he set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the “Major-General’s Song” from Gilbert and Sullivan‘s Pirates of Penzance.

Lehrer’s early performances dealt with non-topical subjects and black humor (also known as dark comedy) in songs such as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park“. In the 1960s, he produced songs about timely social and political issues, particularly for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was. The popularity of these songs has far outlasted their topical subjects and references. Lehrer quoted a friend’s explanation: “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.”[1] In the early 1970s, Lehrer largely retired from public performance to devote his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Early life

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928, to a secular Jewish family and grew up on Manhattan‘s Upper East Side.[2][3] He was the son of Morris James Lehrer (1897–1986) and Anna Lehrer (née Waller; 1905–1978) and older brother of Barry Waller Lehrer (1930–2007).[4][5] He began studying classical piano at the age of seven, but was more interested in the popular music of the age. Eventually, his mother sent him to a popular-music piano teacher.[6] At this early age, he began writing show tunes, which eventually helped him as a satirical composer and writer in his years of lecturing at Harvard University and later at other universities.[7]

Lehrer attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, part of the Bronx borough of New York.[2][8] He also attended Camp Androscoggin, both as a camper and a counselor.[9] Stephen Sondheim had, as a camp counselor, Tom Lehrer.[10]

Lehrer was considered a child prodigy and skipped two grades.[11] After graduation from Loomis School, at the age of 15 he entered Harvard College, where one of his professors was Irving Kaplansky.[12][13][2] As an undergraduate student at Harvard, he began to write comic songs, to entertain his friends, including “Fight Fiercely, Harvard“. Those songs were later named collectively the “Physical Revue”,[14] a joking reference to a leading scientific journal, the Physical Review.

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