American musician and song satirist Tom Lehrer has passed away at the age of 97.
Known for his darkly humorous songs with political connotations, Tom became popular during the Cold War era and later abandoned his music career to return to teaching mathematics at Harvard University.
The New York-based musician's long-time friend David Herder confirmed on Sunday, July 27, that Tom died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Aside from Harvard, Tom had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he turned away from his own copyright, allowing the public to use his lyrics in any format without a return fee.
He had gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends.
Soon after that, he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach, after acquiring a math degree at the age of 18, and obtain a master's degree in math.
Through his songs, he poked fun at the music genre he did not enjoy, Boy Scouts, and religion and produced a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was.
Tom Lehrer's most enduring songs include The Elements, a list of the chemical elements set to the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General from The Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera.
