Tom Lehrer Tidbits

Until somebody gets a real biography done, this is the page where I will put up a variety of information about Tom's life, and other miscellaneous interesting things that don't fit anywhere else.

• Tom Lehrer is mentioned twice in the AMS database:
  [1] Fagen, R. E.; Lehrer, T. A. Random walks with restraining barrier as applied to the biased binary counter. J. Soc. Indust. Appl. Math. 6 1958 1--14.
  [2] Austin, T.; Fagen, R.; Lehrer, T.; Penney, W. The distribution of the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample. Ann. Math. Statist. 28 (1957), 786--790.
  (Drew Burton)
• Tom Lehrer wrote a song for the move "A Gathering Of Eagles" (1963). (Alice Chodkowski) Also check out the IMDB search for some other interesting things he did.
• In the early days of Mad Magazine, they published illustrated versions of some of his songs. (Samuel Rebelsky)
• The CD "Waitin' for a Ride" by Darby O'Gill contains a cover of "The Irish Ballad." This CD is listed in CDDB. No publisher info. This was produced in someone's garage as a local effort. (Jim Sanderson)
• Story from Dave Patten: On PBS some years back, there was a feature on public education that was narrated in part by Keith Carradine. He had received a small bit from Tom for the show, and sang it sans music. I only remember one line- "and now our schools are like combat sectors, with guns and bombs and metal detectors..." Can anybody verify this?
• Little story by Louis Pashman: From about 1949-1958, I went to summer camp in Maine at camp Androscoggin. Tom Lehrer had been a camper there quite a while before me. He used to come back to camp each year for several days and entertain all of us with crazy songs.
• Drew Mathers came up with the updated UCSC search page.
• In the Nov 7, 1996 edition the LA Times ran an interview with Tom Lehrer. For a nominal fee you can get the interview off their website.
• April 9, 1996, was Tom's 68th birthday, which means he was born April 9, 1928
• The Elements was used several years ago on a PBS special on cold fusion.
• Here's what Todd Everett told me:

  Tom is very much alive; I spoke with him last week for a brief feature I'm doing for the Los Angeles Times' Ventura County Edition in connection with a local production of "Tomfoolery." He still lives in Cambridge, and spends a few months each year teaching math for non-mathameticians at the University of California in Santa Cruz. And he (relatively recently) wrote a song called "That's Mathematics" that Dr. Demento plays now and again and has on one of his fan club compilations.