Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer at an event, in1960.

Tom Lehrer (born 9 April 1928), also known as Thomas Andrew Lehrer, is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and mathematician. Lehrer is known for his comic songs which were written in the 1950s and 1960s. His career was short, as he retired in the 1970s, in order to focus on teaching mathematics at Harvard University. His most known songs are "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", and The Elements, where Lehrer sung all the elements in the periodic table (at that time), to the tune of the Modern Major General, a song that was written by Gilbert and Sullivan for the stage show The Pirates of Penzance.

His work

He released a few albums in his years of work, which were split from recordings from live concerts, to just studio versions, recorded without an audience. The first one of these albums was released in 1953, and the last was released in 1965, (minus a stereo rerecording of the first album, and the releasing of 'Songs and More Songs by Tom Lehrer' in 1996, which put two albums together, including a few more songs. These albums are as follows:

Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953)
An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer (1959)
More of Tom Lehrer (1959)
Revisited (1960)
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

In 2022, he released his music into the public domain. ^[1] They are free to download.

Mathematics

Lehrer earned his AB in Mathematics in 1946, and an MA degree the following year. He has taught mathematics at many universities. Some of these are Harvard, MIT and University of California-Santa Cruz.^[2]

Tom Lehrer Media

Lehrer in Loomis School's 1943 yearbook
Lehrer in Harvard University's 1947–1948 yearbook
(From left) Lehrer, Robert H. Welker, David Z. Robinson, and Lewis M. Branscomb perform a hymn for the Harvard Spring rites on Arbor Day, 1951. The quartet performed songs for The Physical Revue.
Black-and-white photograph of Lehrer
Black-and-white photograph of Lehrer
Lehrer as an honorary member of the Copenhagen Student Union, 1967
Black-and-white photograph of Lehrer
Black-and-white photograph of Lehrer
Portrait of Tom Lehrer in circa 1983date QS:P,+1983-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902