Randy Pausch:RANDY PAUSCH'S "last lecture" on facing up to terminal cancer turned the US university professor into a media phenomenon. Millions of people have watched his inspirational lecture on the web and it led to a best-selling book which has been translated into 29 languages.
The Last Lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, is designed to let senior academics imagine what message they would impart to history given one final chance. But when Pausch, a professor in both the university's human-computer interaction institute and its school of design, took the podium on September 18th last year, the final chance was almost literally true.
Pausch, who has died aged 47, had learned just weeks earlier that his pancreatic cancer had metastasised to his liver and spleen; he had been given a maximum of six months to live.
He delivered his talk to a full hall. However, millions of people have since watched it on the web and his book has topped the bestseller charts since it was published in April.
Beginning his lecture by showing slides of the cancers attacking his pancreas, Pausch told his audience: "If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you," and went on to talk about his goal of living with "childlike wonder".
He spoke of childhood dreams he had achieved - among them winning giant stuffed animals at carnivals, designing rides for Walt Disney, walking with zero gravity, and writing an entry in the World Bookencyclopedia he had adored as a boy. He mentioned dreams he had not achieved - such as being Star Trek'sCaptain Kirk, or playing football in the US national football league - but pointed out he had learned valuable lessons from both the TV show and from playing high school football.
He said he believed that if you lived life the right way, and realised "the brick walls are to separate those who really want to do something from those who say they do" that "the dreams will come to you". He added that the following day was his wife's birthday, and as his audience sang Happy Birthdaya giant cake was wheeled out.
Pausch's talk might never have gone beyond campus memory had it not been for the intervention of Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journalcolumnist and Carnegie Mellon graduate, who had heard about the circumstances of the event and driven from Chicago to attend. His resulting column, and link to a video of the lecture on the journal's website, produced an amazing example of electronic instant celebrity.
The video gained an enormous response, and last September ABC Television invited Pausch on to their Good Morning Americaprogramme and made him their "news person of the week". In October he repeated his lecture on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He also agreed to collaborate with Zaslow on a book, dictating his copy over the telephone while he rode his bicycle, one hour a day for 53 days. A bidding war pushed the advance for The Last Lectureto $6.7 million (€4.3 million).
Pausch was born in Baltimore, where his father sold insurance and his mother was a teacher. His parents founded a group called Up With Kids to teach immigrant children English, and indulged young Randy's imagination, letting him paint on the walls of his bedroom.
After graduating in computer science in 1982, he was accepted on his second try at Carnegie Mellon, where he earned his doctorate in computer science in 1988. He then taught at the University of Virginia until 1997, when he returned to Carnegie Mellon as an associate professor.
The publicity generated by his lecture won Pausch an invitation to appear in the next Star Trek movie, and last October he got to practise for a day with the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. He also used his new-found fame to testify before the US Congress on behalf of pancreatic cancer research.
But he stopped having chemotherapy in June, and moved to Chesapeake, Virginia, to be near his wife's family. He is survived by his wife Jai and their young children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe, for whom he maintained his lecture was intended as a message-in-a-bottle. Pausch said his mantra was that "we cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
...
Randolph Frederick Pausch, born October 23rd, 1960; died July 25th, 2008