Helen Arney, and the magazine Chemistry World, and a whole bunch of friends, have added new bits to Tom Lehrer‘s song “The Elements.” The tune was written long ago by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and…). Here are videos of that version, and an earlier version in Japanese by relatives of Ig Nobel Prize winner Theo […]
Tag: Tom Lehrer
DNA and “The Elements”, and two birthdays
Three days after James Watson (of eventual molecular-structure-of-DNA fame) was born, Tom Lehrer (eventual author and singer of “The Elements” and much more) was born. Make of that what you will. This month, each of them becomes 90 years old. Andrew Robinson wrote an appreciation of Tom Lehrer, in Nature magazine.
New new math, again, recalls the same old song
There’s a new way to teach and learn mathematics, replacing the old new way to teach and learn mathematics. The previous new method replaced previous previous new methods. NBC News 4, in Washington, DC, describes the newest of the new: An Iowa woman jokingly calls it “Satan’s handiwork.” A California mom says she’s broken down […]
Gilbert and Sullivan (and Cambridge, Condensed-Matter Physics, and The Elements)
Tom Lehrer once proclaimed, as part of the song “Clementine,” that songs from Gilbert and Sullivan (especially when it comes to a “rousing finale”) were “full of words and music and signifying nothing.” Of course, Gilbert and Sullivan often provide a great foundation to write a parody, as Tom Lehrer himself demonstrated in “The Elements” (and […]
Ant men who really love their mother
This half-century-old song by Tom Lehrer seems—save for its failure to mention ants—to anticipate a study published this month about ants: “Virgin ant queens mate with their own sons to avoid failure at colony foundation,” Christine Vanessa Schmidt [pictured here], Sabine Frohschammer, Alexandra Schrempf, Jürgen Heinze, Naturwissenschaften, vol. 101, no. 1, January 2014, pp 69-72. […]
A biography of Tom Lehrer
If you are looking for a biography of Tom Lehrer — and why wouldn’t you be? — here’s one: “Tom Lehrer: Having Fun,” Jeremy Bernstein, The American Scholar, 1984, vol.53, 3, pp.295-302. Here are a few of the many good reasons why you might be looking:
Tom Lehrer sings of sociology and mathematics
Tom Lehrer, master of many trades, sings here about sociology and mathematics, a mixture that is not always a solution: (HT Vaughn Tan)
“The Elements”, Lehrerized & Grayed in Japanese
Theo Gray and Tom Lehrer collaborated to produce this video of a Japanese version of Tom’s masterpiece song The Elements. Theo Gray was awarded the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry for gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic table table. Tom Lehrer is Tom […]
So simple that only a child can do it…
A new study reaffirms the Tom Lehrer song that mathematics, as presented by professionals, is “so very simple that only a child can do it.” The study is “What Do Transitive Inference and Class Inclusion Have in Common? Categorical (Co)Products and Cognitive Development,” published in the December 2009 issue of PLoS Computational Biology. The authors […]