IAU Approves Asteroids Named for 'Weird Al' Yankovic and Tom Lehrer

Planetary scientist Allison McGraw championed Yankovic's asteroid, joined by several heavy hitters in the planetary science field, according to the Tucson Star. They included astrophysicist Steve Desch from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University; Tim McCoy, one of the main curators of meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution; and University of Arizona research scientist Melissa Brucker, leader of the Spacewatch program, which has discovered more than 179,000 asteroids.

The scientists also convinced the International Astronomical Union to name an asteroid after Lehrer, who died last year at age 97. Lehrer's work includes 'The Elements,' a 1959 song in which he recites the entire periodic table to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Major-General's Song.' 'He was a mathematician and teacher and also wrote math- and science-themed songs,' McGraw said. 'We felt that someone who had that kind of science enthusiasm really deserved to have their name up in the sky....'

McGraw said she hopes naming space rocks after stars like Lehrer and 'Weird Al' will cast some reflected light on two things she is passionate about: asteroid research and science communication. Six years ago, a 92-year-old Lehrer released all his lyrics into the public domain. Wikipedia notes he had 'largely retired' by the 1970s to become a mathematics teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Slashdot ran a brief career retrospective when Lehrer died last year at age 97.

The IAU writes that 'Generations of scientists have been inspired' by Weird Al Yankovic's 'comedic musical works, including It's All About the Pentiums and White and Nerdy.' In the latter, Yankovic sings, 'I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon.' He appears in a song envisioning a rap battle between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sir Isaac Newton. In 1999, he recorded a five-minute summation of Star Wars: Phantom Menace, sung to the wistful tune of Don McLean's American Pie. Performing it last month in an NPR Tiny Desk concert, 'most of the audience was singing along,' an interviewer at NPR remembered.

'It's one of those songs that means a lot to people, particularly Star Wars fans, of course,' Yankovic said, according to NPR. 'But I mean, I see a lot of people in the audience cosplaying as Jedi Knights and waving their light sabers... I've even heard that, you know, they play that song at Star Wars conventions, and people get weepy, you know... [I]t really hits people in a tender place somehow...' The song includes the lines: 'Oh my, my, this here Anakin guy may be Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry. And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye, sayin' soon, I'm gonna be a Jedi.'

Yankovic has led a geek-friendly career. In the heyday of Napster, he released an anthem-style parody mocking the arguments of the Recording Industry Association of America, titled 'Don't Download This Song.' The lyrics include 'Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong...' and describe a slippery slope from breaking international copyright law to robbing liquor stores and worse. As a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Yankovic bootstrapped a career in 1979 by recording his first novelty song, 'My Bologna,' a parody of 'My Sharona' by the Knack, while playing his accordion in a bathroom for its acoustics. The IAU acknowledged the geeky themes in his 1999 song 'It's All About the Pentiums,' a filk on Puff Daddy's 'It's All About the Benjamins,' which asks: 'You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh / Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half? / You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette / You're the biggest joke on the Internet...'