Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-educated mathematician whose brief side gig as one of America’s favorite satirical composers captured in tune some of the anxieties and absurdities of the 1950s and 1960s, has died,

Tom Lehrer, a mathematician and satirist whose musical influence peaked in the 1950s and ’60s with his topical songs, died on Saturday. He was 97. Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his friend, David Herder, told The New York Times .