Here’s to Tom Lehrer, elemental geek
Posted by Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior
VP, Product Management
We live in a world focused on celebrity, but there are also
luminaries — those guiding lights who actually inspire celebrities
along with the rest of us. Today there's a luminary we'd
like to call out:
Lehrer. It hasn't escaped our attention that Mr. Lehrer
turned 80 last week. (We have it on good authority that his view of
numbers is such that 80 is not so different than 79, so he probably
won't mind this belated note.) We think he's great.
We're fans.
Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist
songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm
created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of
what Google's culture tries to be about. His work is clever,
playful and fun and connects things in ways that surprises,
delights and inspires. (Consider
id="zs_0" >"The Element Song", his ode to the periodic
table, or his lesson on
id="zp:h" >"New Math".) How could we not be inspired
by someone who can craft a good laugh, a great tune, and an elegant
equation?
From href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgMTAj4f_o" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-DHBiYnrc"
id="h9_z" >"The Masochism Tango" to
id="djxr" >"Who's Next"
id="cjub" >"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
you have to hear it), Mr. Lehrer's unique music carved out a
distinctive place in popular music in the 1950s and '60s. He
made his fans feel smart. An entrepreneur — and we like
entrepreneurs — he self-produced and sold his songs via mail
order. And for all the edginess in his humor, he ended up writing
some ten clever songs for the '70s public television
children's program The Electric Company, including
a
about the letter 'e.'
Although Wikipedia notes that he performed only 109 shows and wrote
just 37 songs over 20 years, we think his impact and influence goes
well beyond those numbers. He was the best kind of "geek"
before the word made its way into pop culture. He's the kind of
character as comfortable teaching a university course on the
history of the musical — which he did — as running a seminar on
the nature of mathematics — which he did.
We hope that in retirement Mr. Lehrer is enjoying himself even a
fraction as much as we've enjoyed his work. We're grateful
that he's such a great example of how science, humor, music and
mathematics can be combined to create such wonderful things.
Tags: , Jonathan, ManagementWe, Posted, product, Rosenberg, Senior, VP
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