Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ‘60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on August 9 at his home in Cambridge, MA. He was 97.

Mr. Lehrer’s lyrics were clever, sometimes salacious, and almost always satirical. Accompanying himself on the piano, he performed in nightclubs, in concert, and on records that his admirers purchased originally by mail order, in the hundreds of thousands. In 1953 encouraged by friends, he produced an album. To his surprise, “Songs by Tom Lehrer,” cut and pressed in an initial run of 400 copies, was a hit. Sold through the mail and initially promoted almost entirely by word of mouth, it ultimately sold an estimated half-million copies.

His music, though, was just a detour in an academic career that included teaching posts at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, and even a stint with the Atomic Energy Commission.

Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home “until my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will, of course, move to California full time.”

Morton Mintz, a journalist who in articles and books exposed the perils of prescription medical products like thalidomide and the Dalkon Shield, and who challenged the auto industry to be more accountable to consumers, died on August 4 at his home in Washington. He was. 103.

From 1946 to 1958, Mr. Mintz was a reporter in St. Louis first for The Star-Times and then for The Globe-Democrat, where he exposed the plight of vulnerable people with intellectual disabilities. He was hired by The Washington Post in 1958, and for the next 30 years his reporting on consumer issues would help spur reforms by the federal government and Congress.

Of all the stories he investigated, his thalidomide exposé led to hearings that required pharmaceutical companies to prove both the safety and efficacy of their products before marketing them, to get informed consent before clinical trials and to report adverse drug reactions.

He also raised red flags about birth control pills, MER/29, a medicine that lowered cholesterol levels but with harmful side effects, and Oraflex an anti-arthritis drug that was ultimately withdrawn.

Zelig Eshhar, an immunologist whose breakthrough research in the 1980s created a critical pathway to developing immunotherapies that attack particular cancers, died on July 3 at Tel Yitzhak, a kibbutz in central Israel. He was 84.

Dr. Eshhar’s exploration of the human immune system began in the 1960s, during his Ph.D. studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv. There, he focused on the T-cell, a type of white blood cell with the natural ability to fight germs and disease. Dr. Eshhar’s CAR-T leap is the fundamental science behind immunotherapies that since 2017 have been approved by the F.D.A. to treat blood cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Small clinical trials of CAR-T therapies for ovarian and colorectal cancers have also shown promise, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Wallis Annenberg, who in more than 20 years in leadership positions at her family’s Annenberg Foundation oversaw more than $3 billion in grants and donations to projects that include the arts, wildlife, and older adults, died on August 11 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 86.

Philanthropic projects have included the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; PetSpace, an animal adoption hospital and humane education center; GenSpace, an innovative community center for older adults; and the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, a structure that, when completed, will span 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, CA, to allow the safe movement of mountain lions and other wildlife from the Santa Monica Mountains.

When Ms. Annenberg was asked by The Beverly Hills Courier in 2019 what makes a project resonate enough for her to support it, she said, “I have to give from my heart, first and foremost. Which is why I’ve been focused on issues like women’s empowerment, engaging people in the visual and performing arts, strengthening the human-animal bond. Things that really matter to me.”

Across more than 40 years as a popular New York talk-show host on WNYC and WBAI, Leonard Lopate interviewed writers, artists, actors, directors, politicians, scientists, journalists, musicians, athletes, designers, and explorers, including 42 Nobel Prize winners, one U.S. President (Jimmy Carter), and two future presidents (Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.) Mr. Lopate died on August 5 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 84.

In 2010, he told The Brooklyn Rail, an arts and culture journal, “If I’m talking to a novelist, I’m not going to ask him why Mary killed John on page 84. I’m going to ask instead how he or she came up with the idea for the book.

“Same thing applies to a painter, a sculptor, a conceptual artist. It’s all about how they approach their work and how they come up with what they’ve achieved. Audiences are interested in hearing how they came to be what they are, and why they have succeeded and someone else has not.”

Daniel Warren Hoffman, an American-Israeli klezmer violinist, composer, and documentary film producer, died on July 18, 2025, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Mr. Hoffman founded the klezmer-jazz fusion ensemble, the Klez-X and co-founded Davka and Trio Carpion. He also produced the documentary film “Otherwise It’s Just Firewood,” the pilot film for a television series that explores the role of the Italianate violin in disparate cultures worldwide. The film was aired widely on American PBS stations in 2018.

He studied and performed Arabic, Turkish, Greek and Balkan music. As a composer, he received composition grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and numerous American theaters, including Theater J, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, and Traveling Jewish Theater.

[Click the link and enjoy Mr. Hoffman’s amazing klezmer violin] https://youtu.be/BVtIl3dqDbM

Morton Meyerson, an understated Texas businessman who helped H. Ross Perot build Electronic Data Systems into a world-leading data processing company, and who later advised Mr. Perot during his 1992 presidential campaign, died on August 4 at his home in Dallas. He was 87.

Mr. Meyerson was the quiet, stubborn, moneymaking computer programmer in the backroom who helped make his boss a billionaire. Mr. Perot had started E.D.S. in 1962 with a $1,000 check. In 1984, when General Motors bought the company, it had $1 billion in revenue. When Mr. Meyerson finally left E.D.S., it was the largest computer services company in the world.