Tom Lehrer, a social and political satirist who amassed a devoted following in the 1950s and 1960s for routines featuring blithely subversive musical numbers such as “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III),” “National Brotherhood Week” and “The Vatican Rag,” died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 97.

There never was a time like the 1950s — not even during the 1950s.

Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s.