Tom Lehrer ’47, Mathematician and Musician Who Set Wicked Satire to Cheery Tunes, Dies at 97
Trained as a mathematician, Lehrer quickly developed a following as a musical satirist, offering sardonic political and social commentary set to upbeat piano melodies. Despite his success — his first album, initially made just for mail orders, ended up selling half a million copies and made top-ten charts in the United Kingdom — he played his last public show in 1972. He devoted the majority of his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater.
Anthony J. Tromba, who sat on the committee that hired Lehrer as a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that instead, Lehrer would have considered himself an educator and communicator.
“He liked making people happy,” Tromba said. “He communicated through singing, and he was really committed to educating people, and he loved mathematics and liked to teach people why it was important, significant.”
Lehrer was born in New York City — where he eschewed lessons in classical piano in favor of a teacher who would let him play Broadway showtunes — and attended the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut before entering Harvard at age 15 for a degree in mathematics.
