Tom Lehrer, Rest in Peace

Tom Lehrer (1928 - 2025)

David Warren posts a eulogy for Tom Lehrer, which includes this line:

Lehrer, a brilliant mathematician, and atom bombist at Los Alamos, who studied under Irwin Kaplansky at Harvard from age fifteen, was like this master an amateur musician and composer of show tunes.

I know Tom from his tunes, never heard about the math or nuclear stuff.

From Wikipedia:

Lehrer was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1955. He served until 1957, working at the National Security Agency (NSA). . . . In 2020 Lehrer publicly revealed that he had been assigned to the NSA; since the mere fact of the NSA's existence was classified at the time, Lehrer found himself in the position of implicitly using nuclear weapons work as a cover story for something more sensitive.

The phrase 'using nuclear weapons work as a cover story' sounds like something out of a James Bond-ish movie.