India, July 28 -- Tom Lehrer, pianist, songwriter, mathematician, and the man who made black comedy sing, has died at 97. According to Variety, his friends said he was found at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on Saturday. A cult figure long before television caught up with him, Lehrer balanced fame with a day job: teaching math at Harvard and, later, UC Santa Cruz. As he once told a crowd, "I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this. I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching."

Born in New York to a Jewish family, he started piano at 7, devoured the American songbook, and could mimic any style on the keys. A prodigy, he entered Harvard at 15, graduated magna ...