[HN Gopher] Tom Lehrer has died
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Tom Lehrer has died
https://archive.ph/gY3Xa Also: https://apnews.com/article/tom-
lehrer-son-satirist-mathemati...
Author : detaro
Score : 378 points
Date : 2025-07-27 17:13 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| detaro wrote:
| (reminder that he published all his lyrics and music as public
| domain a few years ago: https://tomlehrersongs.com/ )
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| lyrics and sheet music on archive.org
| https://archive.org/details/tomlehrersongs
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I never would have thought that he was still alive. Until reading
| the article, I don't think I ever saw a picture of him in color.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Same. I would have guessed he died years ago. Loved his satire.
| sitkack wrote:
| What a wonderful soul.
|
| > Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for
| Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home "until
| my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will of
| course move to California full time."
|
| To think he is only a couple years younger than Mel Brooks.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Speaking of Jell-O: I have heard, and perhaps this is
| apocryphal, that Tom Lehrer was the inventor of the Jell-O
| shot.
| kragen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
|
| > Lehrer once stated that he invented the Jello shot during
| this time, as a means of circumventing the base's ban on
| alcoholic beverages.[18]
|
| 18. Boulware, Jack (April 19, 2000). "That Was the Wit That
| Was". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on November 28,
| 2018. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181128164739/https://archives..
| ..
|
| Full text at https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https
| ://archives.... for the time being. Save your copy while the
| Archive still exists!
| andrepd wrote:
| He's a great guy, his wikiquote page is a treasure
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
| serf wrote:
| Some of the most clever songs i've ever heard, and a good person
| too. RIP.
| wslh wrote:
| https://archive.is/89a1G
| ForOldHack wrote:
| He is now flying with the pigeons he poisoned. Brilliant lyricist
| I learned in grade school. Brilliant.
| 42772827 wrote:
| Lehrer taught me, at a young age, that the "division" between
| music and mathematics was completely arbitrary, that you can be
| interested in both, and indeed there is significant overlap.
|
| Truly a gift of a person, we were fortunate to have him for
| nearly a century.
| jebarker wrote:
| When I did my maths degree in the UK in the early 00s it was
| quite popular to do a "Maths and Music" degree that was equally
| split between the two. I've also been a musician all my life so
| one more sample point!
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| Always liked his "Werner Von Braun":
|
| https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=RDu536cWahc2Oct7
| nmca wrote:
| I feel the AI safety community has not made enough of Lehrer's
| masterpiece on the topic:
|
| https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?si=DYsY5Juco-kJ5eWD
| MBlume wrote:
| I assure you we sing it sometimes!
| yuppiemephisto wrote:
| We sung it at solstice
| dosinga wrote:
| "In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down Und I'm
| learning Chinese!" - as relevant as ever. Maybe less so German
| and more matrix multiplication
| andrepd wrote:
| "'Nazi Schmazi' says Werner von Braun" is an amazing joke
| jacquesm wrote:
| It had me in stitches when I first heard and I really
| wondered how big a fraction of his audience got that one.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's
| not my department.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "National Brotherhood Week" is another great one.
| seunosewa wrote:
| I loved his wacky songs. He made poisoning pigeons in the park
| and nuclear proliferation funny.
| philodeon wrote:
| He gave a lovely little performance in the late 1990s to
| celebrate one of his fellow mathematicians:
|
| https://youtu.be/zxFCQplZgKI
| dekhn wrote:
| I loved Lehrer growing up- my parents had his record "That Was
| the Week That Was" which I think is his finest work. Anyway, when
| I went to college (UCSC), I took his 'Nature of Math' course,
| which was quite enjoyable. He was a great presenter, I learned
| all sorts of neat stuff like the the quartic factoring challenge
| and the pigeonhole principle/birthday paradox (at the time, I
| didn't know much about hash tables and didn't make the
| connection).
|
| I almost ended up TA'ing his class the next year but I had to
| focus on my undergraduate thesis instead. I would have loved to
| get to know him better, as his sense of humor was incredible.
|
| I also had Ralph Abraham- a chaos theory guy and psychonaut who
| taught hist class (Nature of Math) in a natural amphitheater- at
| points, I could almost picture him wearing a toga, lecturing us
| on greek math.
| shiandow wrote:
| Is it to much to ask for a black bar? For reasons I can't
| articulate I've always considered him a hacker in spirit.
| kragen wrote:
| He was a math professor, a secret government cryptographer, a
| comedian in technically challenging musical-theater forms, and
| reportedly the inventor of the Jell-O shot.
|
| Stallman says in https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html:
|
| > _Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not,
| that is hacking. (...) It is hard to write a simple definition
| of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these
| activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and
| exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what
| is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that
| display playful cleverness have "hack value"._
|
| However:
|
| > _The concept of hacking excludes wit and art as such. The
| people who began to speak of their activities as "hacking" were
| familiar with wit and art, and with the names of the various
| fields of those; they were also doing something else, something
| different, for which they came up with the name "hacking".
| Thus, composing a funny joke or a beautiful piece of music may
| well involve playful cleverness, but a joke as such and a piece
| of music as such are not hacks, however funny or beautiful they
| may be. However, if the piece is a palindrome, we can say it is
| a hack as well as music; if the piece is vacuous, we can say it
| is a hack on music._
|
| (So I think _The Elements_ qualifies, if barely.)
|
| And with respect to
|
| > _Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules
| that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways
| around._
|
| perhaps we should mention mention the origin story of the
| Jell-O shot from https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/htt
| ps://archives....:
|
| > _A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer
| invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused
| with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He
| throws his head back and laughs._
|
| > _" That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I
| was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas
| party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C.
| The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we
| wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an
| evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he
| says with a shrug._
|
| > _" And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was
| the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff
| -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her
| apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I
| would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say,
| 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd
| say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I
| recommend it. Orange Jell-O."_
|
| So, yeah. Definitely a hacker.
| etrautmann wrote:
| I grew up with a tape of Tom Leher songs and memorized the
| periodic table of elements song in middle school, which has
| mostly stuck with me. I loved his sense of humor - what a
| wonderful soul.
| philodeon wrote:
| As sad as today is, the one ray of sunshine here is that Tom
| Lehrer's obit was written so long ago (and saved for the day it
| would be needed), that no one updated it with the subsequent
| revelation that his work at the Atomic Energy Commission was
| actually a cover story for his far more sensitive work at the
| fledgling National Security Agency.
|
| Seeing the New York Times publish wrong out-of-date information
| has been funny since Judith Miller.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810#40460118
| GEO: As a mathematician did you ever make any brilliant
| discoveries? TOM LEHRER: Oh,nonono. I have no desire
| to extend the frontier of human knowledge; retract them, if
| anything. I like to teach it and I like to think about it, but
| that's about it.
| jakedata wrote:
| https://tomlehrersongs.com/
|
| I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer
| Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions: All
| copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been
| permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such
| songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have
| never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so
| long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have
| abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and
| interest in and to my work and have injected any and all
| copyrights into the public domain.
|
| The permission granted includes all lyrics which I have written
| to music by others, although the music to such parodies, if
| copyrighted by their composers, are of course not included
| without permission of their copyright owners. The translated
| songs on this website may be found on YouTube in their original
| languages. Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are
| included in this permission. Translation rights are also
| included.
|
| In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any
| of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music
| to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or
| distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal
| action.
|
| Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by
| me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie,
| or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and
| therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom
| Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording,
| movie, or TV companies involved.
|
| In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
|
| So help yourselves, and don't send me any money.
|
| NOTICE: THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT
| TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON'T
| WAIT TOO LONG.
|
| Tom Lehrer November 26, 2022
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I made a git archive of everything a little over a year ago:
| https://github.com/jcalvinowens/tomlehrer-archive
|
| You can help out by hosting a copy somewhere!
| reactordev wrote:
| Doing the lords work...
|
| It's sad that these things will eventually be lost to
| centralization and digital aging. Make physical copies as
| well. How long does the USB standard last?
|
| Think about the music that has been lost to
| time/death/natural disaster/RIAA
| weinzierl wrote:
| Aren't his songs owned by a label? Did he really keep all the
| rights, so he was able to do what the text above says?
|
| If not, do we know which subset of his work is free?
|
| EDIT:
|
| His Wikipedia page lists the following labels:
|
| - TransRadio
|
| - Lehrer
|
| - Reprise/Warner Bros.
|
| - Rhino/Atlantic
|
| - Shout! Factory
|
| - Needlejuice Records
|
| His sheet music was published by Crown Publishers Inc.
|
| His public domain dedication is a noble gesture, but legally it
| probably doesn't mean much.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sounds like maybe he self-published: "All such rights are now
| released herewith and therefore do not require any permission
| from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in
| another hat"
| justin66 wrote:
| His work was self-published.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683#24834514
|
| _> As a souvenir for [his graduate student friends], Lehrer
| decided in 1953 to make a record of the songs he had written
| at Harvard. He recorded Songs by Tom Lehrer in one session at
| Trans Radio studios in Boston on a 10-inch LP.. bought the
| rights to the record from Trans Radio, and began selling it
| by mail order.. By 1954.. he had sold 10,000 records.. By the
| end of the decade, he had sold 370,000 records._
| jgrahamc wrote:
| In "An Evening Waster With Tom Lehrer" he chats a little between
| songs and tells a short story about someone who becomes a doctor:
| "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the
| rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age".
|
| "Diseases of the rich" has always seemed like a useful metaphor
| for one way to decide on what product you are going to build.
| Does it heal a "disease" of the "rich"?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Darn... RIP.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| RIP Mr. Lehrer.
|
| I'd only heard of him from a song of his, "Poisoning pigeons in
| the park", that has been available on DECtalk since way back.
|
| Searching for this, I just found another of his, "I got it from
| Agnes", that has also been adapted for DECtalk. Similar dark
| humor!
|
| https://chordify.net/chords/i-got-it-from-agnes-by-tom-lehre...
| philodeon wrote:
| Lehrer performed it charmingly on Parkinson:
|
| https://youtu.be/R6qFG0uop9k
| kolinko wrote:
| 97 years, wow! I guess he waited to go together with everyone
| else, and just couldn't wait any more :)
| lb1lf wrote:
| Tom Lehrer has been my go-to source of acerbic wit and brilliant
| satire since I first encountered him when attending the Norwegian
| University of Tecnology and Science; a group I joined there held
| Lehrer in high esteem and I, too, was blown away by how timeless
| a lot of his songs were; a lot of satire ages very quickly, but
| chances are my unborn grandchildren will laugh hysterically to
| 'Who's Next?' or 'Wernher von Braun' after doing the mid-21st
| century equivalent of googling to find out who WvB was, of
| course.
|
| Godspeed, Tom. This has been a rough week - three of the heroes
| of my formative years have checked out of existence - Lehrer,
| Ozzy and author Ingvar Ambjornsen. Sigh. Who's next?
| philodeon wrote:
| One wonders how seriously this tribute should be taken given
| that the educational institution referenced has the acronym
| NUTS.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wait until you hear about what the institute is called in the
| translation of Monday Begins on Saturday
| howard941 wrote:
| We will all go together when we go
|
| https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?si=iJqkfAUqkHHkkwP2
| wisemang wrote:
| "Played piano acceptably."
| walterbell wrote:
| _" Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?"_ (2024), 170
| comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810
|
| _" Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain"_ (2020),
| 130 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683
|
| _" Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire"_ (2018), 80
| comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Tom Lehrer and Santa Cruz: the trail of one of America 's
| premier satirists_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40986181 - July 2024 (26
| comments)
|
| _Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810 - May 2024 (170
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer DAT Recordings_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38778749 - Dec 2023 (2
| comments)
|
| _That 's Mathematics - Tom Lehrer Songs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471908 - Nov 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Tom Lehrer puts all music and lyrics in public domain_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038206 - Dec 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy 's Mysterious Genius_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34034896 - Dec 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs into the public
| domain_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024968 - Dec
| 2022 (130 comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer - We Will All Go Together When We Go_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509279 - March 2022 (2
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer - So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III, 1967)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30496103 - Feb 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Tom Lehrer Puts His Music into the Public Domain_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882384 - Oct 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 - Oct 2020 (132
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer 's Mathematical Songs (1951)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 - Aug 2020 (44
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer's memorable "Revue" session_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 - Sept 2018 (6
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 - April 2018 (83
| comments)
|
| _Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy 's Mysterious Genius_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 - Dec 2015 (3
| comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682 -
| Dec 2015 (32 comments)
|
| _Tom Lehrer 's last (math) class (2001)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914399 - Nov 2010 (1
| comment)
| arduanika wrote:
| You almost get the sense he had a few fans around here!
| cormorant wrote:
| Richard Severo, the author of this obituary, died two years ago!
| wolfi1 wrote:
| Does anyone know if there exist videos of his tv shows?
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I used his songs as examples in a web audio project a few months
| ago - as others have mentioned Lehrer generously put all his
| music in the public domain making it perfect for use in other
| projects.
|
| Originally I was going to use one of his albums but I found that
| his humor still hits hard after all these years, to the extent
| that I thought the songs would detract from my project. In the
| end I just used my three favorite song: The Elements, We Will All
| Go Together When We Go, and the absolutely brutal takedown of
| Werher Von Braun.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That wasn't just a takedown of Werner von Bruan but of every
| scientist that checked their ethics at the door of the
| laboratory.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| We need Tom Lehrer more now, in these times, that ever!
| justin66 wrote:
| He somewhat famously observed that his work as a political
| satirist became obsolete when Kissinger received the Nobel
| Peace Prize.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my father loved Tom
| Lehrer - had all his records. My brother and I joked about the
| "sliding down the razor blade of life" lyric a lot.
| archagon wrote:
| May he rest in peace. In memoriam, this hourlong recording of a
| concert in Copenhagen is a joy to watch:
| https://youtu.be/QHPmRJIoc2k
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Did he have a song "when you're dead" about when you learn that
| someone is alive that you thought was dead? Because google ai
| thinks that he did but I can't find it...
| bitlax wrote:
| I'll always remember him for playing the piano acceptably.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That is sad, but he lived a long, rich life.
|
| I was raised on his music. Much of it would not fly, these days.
| too_root wrote:
| I recall listening fondly to his music as a child. The Elements
| and New Math stand out in particular.
|
| A few days ago I played them for my children on a whim.
|
| The universe is weird some times.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| " Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? I've got a hobby:
| rereading Lady Chatterley"
|
| I first heard him when I was 13: it was mind blowing. Can't wait
| to show my kids
| ludicity wrote:
| One of my favourite musicians of all times. All I can say is that
| I can't wait to introduce my children to his work one day.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The world just became a lot poorer.
| gsinclair wrote:
| Such a unique and wonderful contribution to the culture. RIP
| vmlinuz wrote:
| We all know the Daniel Radcliffe story, right? (He performed The
| Elements from memory on a UK talk show, which was allegedly what
| got him hired to play Weird Al in his 'biopic' -
| https://youtu.be/rSAaiYKF0cs?si=MRbiCH20VMCCcnuz )
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