
Tom Lehrer's Mathematical Songs (1951) - jelliclesfarm
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Lehrer_Songs/
======
beagle3
Tom Lehrer is incredibly witty and funny; he was a mathematician and performer
who was active in the 1960's until the 1980's. Some of his stuff is a little
dated but most of it is as relevant as ever.

I found three albums of his - "That was the year that was", "An evening wasted
with Tom Lehrer" and "Antoher evening wasted". They cover the more famous
parts of his repertoire, and for the rest you'll likely have to look through
YouTube and the internet.

Highly recommended.

~~~
dcminter
If you like Tom Lehrer then you might also enjoy his British contemporaries
Flanders & Swann in "At the drop of a hat" and other albums.

With rare exceptions ("The laws of thermodynamics") they didn't write about
the sciences, but they were musically a bit more sophisticated and just as
witty.

Their satire was far less biting but was present. Although Michael Flanders
did monologue: "The purpose of Satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip
off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I
see it, is to put it back again." :)

I recommend their delightful animal song "The Sloth" as having pertinence to
my fellows in the HN audience who have trouble with procrastination...

Edit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM)

~~~
AndrewStephens
On the topic of Flanders and Swann, their song about a gnu[0] (using the then
non-standard pronunciation) was one of the inspirations for the naming the GNU
project.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5z...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5zHSJOc2ma2npAbpM1ZeNJpu7w0dU7-0&index=3)

~~~
dcminter
Nifty, I didn't know that connection, thanks!

------
polytely
My favourite is Wernher Von Braun:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio)

~~~
knolax
Whether Von Braun was Nazi or not the fake German accent is a little
distasteful.

~~~
bloak
What do you think of his fake Russian accent in "Lobachevsky"? I think it's
great. And isn't there a fake Irish accent in one of his songs?

~~~
nealabq
The Irish Ballad (the Rickety-Tickety-Tin song):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQfaRSeaMZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQfaRSeaMZQ)

------
bryanrasmussen
doesn't have New Math
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA)

growing up we had two Tom Lehrer albums (I guess my parents had their good
points)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
That was the first thing I noticed. I guess it’s the New New Math now. I
wonder what he’d have felt about Common Core.

------
polytely
There is a really cool article by buzzfeed of all places detailing Lehrer's
career: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-
lehrer](https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer)

~~~
082349872349872
What next, a _Teen Vogue_ piece on non-euclidean geometry?

------
rm445
I love Tom Lehrer, but I was a little taken aback when I learnt that
Lobachevsky was a real mathematician and not as far as anyone knows a
plagiarist. Seems harsh to skewer a (long-dead) guy's reputation with such a
catchy song.

~~~
etiam
Yeah, that one took me a quite while to realize as well. As far as I now
understand, Lobachevsky was a truly great mathematician and any accusations of
plagiarism absolutely unfounded. Lehrer simply chose him because the name went
well with the Danny Kaye song "Stanislawsky" which he was paraphrasing.
Apparently Lobachevsky's relatives were, understandably, not at all happy with
the implications.

It's the one occasion I can think of where I feel Tom Lehrer's satire was
truly misdirected. One of many reasons I appreciate him so much is otherwise
that when the sharp wit was at someone's expense, they had earned it (and this
in contrast to the practice with most contemporary purported comedians, at
least in my country).

~~~
082349872349872
Over 2'000 years to resolve an open question (Elements, ca. -300 → On the
Origin of Geometry, 1829) is a considerable time.

[http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates](http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates)
(the image _is_ clickable, but it's all greek to me)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History)

I think Lehrer was counting on both the Danny Kaye reference and his prosody
statement to hint at where this song stands with respect to Poe's Law:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288)

------
lippel82
Why does it say (1951) in the title? The article says "Last Updated October
2013" and talks about songs that were published in the seventies.

------
nayuki
The first work of Tom Lehrer's that I heard is "The Elements", where he
recites chemical element names.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_\(song\))
;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM)

------
jedimastert
I occupy an interesting intersection in that I went to school for math and
science (BS in CS, did math and computational chemistry research) and I also
used to play and sing in a piano bar (often in the same night!)

Every once in a while I'd pull out a Tom Lehrer tune, but you really need the
right audience for it.

Fun fact: Tom Lehrer and Steven Sondheim were childhood friends.

------
neiman
The man was doing stuff that would have "broken the Internet", years before
the Internet even existed.

------
Tempest1981
He taught at UC Santa Cruz from 1972 to 2001. I wonder what his classes were
like. Anyone happen to attend?

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x)

~~~
dekhn
yes, I took "Nature of Math". Wonderful course and his delivery was excellent.
I almost ended up being the TA the next quarter. It was my introduction to
many things, including birthday paradox and analytic solutions for tertiary
equations.

------
jelliclesfarm
At least two kid friendly songs:

[https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs](https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs) : Silent E

[https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo](https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo) : LY

~~~
jelliclesfarm
+1 ‘That’s Mathematics’:
[https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk](https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk)

------
sasaf5
From the title I thought he generated melodies with math. Instead, he wrote
songs about math.

------
abalaji
My favorite from the list:
[https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E](https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E)

~~~
janlaureys
Last week there was that opponent of Putin who got poisoned and was sent to a
hospital in Omsk and I was like: "Why do I know the name of that random
Russian city ?".

~~~
jcranmer
Omsk is one of the largest cities in Siberia, and apparently 7th largest in
all of Russia. Tomsk is the small city in that song, as it was bypassed by the
Trans-Siberian Railway in favor of Novosibirsk.

