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Randy Pausch, The Professor Who Gave The Lecture Of a Lifetime

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Inspirational 'Last Lecture' Professor Dies

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose 'last lecture' about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

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Sincerity translates, in other words, on a far more primal level than language. This, Randy Pausch understood. And on the one day he could leave a scratch mark on the face of oblivion, he did so with simple, honest life lessons. That they were ultimately intended for his children after his death gave the talk its aura, and he was showman enough to intuit that.

The book was an afterthought.

Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal columnist, attended the speech and wrote a column about it. It was a huge hit on the Journal's Web site, which led to television appearances for Pausch and to much publishing buzz.

Pausch was unfazed.

"It took him five weeks to make up his mind he even wanted to do it," Zaslow said yesterday in a telephone interview. The pair worked out the book during the course of 53 hour-long talks, conversing by phone while Pausch cycled around his neighborhood last winter to keep his strength up. Zaslow put in herculean hours and got the book out this spring.

And then the season turned to summer, and the tumors came and claimed him.

Death was, as he had made clear that magic evening on the stage, both near and inevitable. But he had made sure his legacy was set. He had done all that a father can -- provide for his children and, at the end, let them know that all he really did in this life was to love them.

Life is not complicated and it is not fair, Randy Pausch might have said. It's just hard sometimes.

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