Trivia

Was erroneously reported as being dead so many times that he kept a scrapbook of articles mentioning him as "the late Tom Lehrer".

He put all of his songs in the public domain in 2020.

Was influenced as a boy by the witty, rapid-fire singing style of Danny Kaye. This influence is most noticeable in Lehrer's songs "The Elements" and "Lobachevsky".

He entered Harvard at age 15, having skipped several grades. Everyone applying for admission to Harvard was required to include an example of their written work. Lehrer submitted a long verse, in the style of W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, which concluded: "I will leave movie thrillers/And watch caterpillars/Get born and pupated and larva'd/And I'll work like a slave/And always behave/And maybe I'll get into Harva'd." The poem in its entirety appeared in "Scholastic Magazine" in 1943. It was Lehrer's first published work.

Lehrer was a big fan of Stephen Sondheim, whom he considered the greatest lyricist in the English language. They actually knew each other when they were children when they attended the same summer camp in 1937 through 1939, but did not meet again until 59 years later.

His three albums for Reprise/Warner Bros. records, "Songs by Tom Lehrer" (repackaged in 1990 as "Revisited"), "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", and "That Was the Year That Was" remained in print and continued to sell after they were released in the late 1950s and mid-1960s. It was Lehrer's quiet boast that these albums actually sold better over the years since than they did at the time of release.

Wrote and recorded several anti-war songs, including "Send the Marines", "So Long, Mom, I'm off to Drop the Bomb" and "We'll All Go Together When We Go."

A critic from the New York Times once said of his work: "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." Lehrer loved the quote so much he put it on the cover of his album An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer.

His first public performance was in 1952 at a Boston nightclub called Alpini's Rendezvous in Kenmore Square, near Boston University.

Hits include "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park".

Contributed songs to the now classic TV show That Was the Week That Was (1963) (NBC: 1963 - 1965), where he also served as an occasional performer. These songs made up the contents of his album "That Was the Year That Was" (Reprise: 1965). He also wrote ten songs and served as an occasional performer for the PBS children's show The Electric Company (1971) in the early 1970s.

Parents divorced when he was 14.

His songs served as the basis for the hit off-Broadway review "Tomfoolery" in 1981.

Three songs he wrote for the educational television show The Electric Company (1971) were made into animated shorts: "Silent E" "S-N (Snore, Sniff, and Sneeze)," and "L-Y," with orchestrations by Joe Raposo.

Wrote ten songs for The Electric Company (1971) after a call from producer Naomi Foner because he was a Harvard classmate and good friend of the late Joe Raposo, the show's musical director for most of the time it was in production and its primary songwriter.

Lecturer, University of California Santa Cruz. (January 2004)

He often arranged his touring schedule based around the cities he most wanted to visit.

Playwright and longtime fan Francis Beckett wrote a revue based around Lehrer's songs, after these had been put in the public domain. On contacting the by now highly reclusive songwriter about this, and getting no reply, he called the show "Tom Lehrer Is Teaching Math and Doesn't Want to Talk to You".

He was known as a very private person who never had any interest in being a celebrity.

Tom was the son of Anna (Waller) and Morris James Lehrer. He was of Russian Jewish descent.

A math prodigy, he entered Harvard College at the age of 15 and graduated magna cum laude in 1946; he received his masters degree from the school just a year later, and fitfully worked on a doctorate there for 15 years.

In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class, on the topic of infinity, and retired from academia.

Lehrer may have worked as a researcher at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

At least two of his songs were not included on any of his LPs: a reworking of Noël Coward's "That is the End of the News" (with some new lyrics) and a comic explanation of how Britain might adapt to the coming of decimal currency.

On June 7 and 8, 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 18 years at the Lyceum Theatre, London as part of the show Hey, Mr. Producer! celebrating the career of Cameron Mackintosh, who had produced Tomfoolery. The June 8 show was his only performance before Queen Elizabeth II.