Randy Pausch, whose Last Lecture was an enormous hit on Youtube, died yesterday. He was a computer science professor, who after being told at the age of 48 that his pancreatic cancer was terminal, gave a lecture entitled “Really Achieving your childhood dreams”. His university (Carnegie Mellon) had a series entitled Last Lecture – for professors to provide their accumulated wisdom. Probably never dreaming that for someone it would be their last lecture.
It’s a great lecture, giving Pausch’s life lessons from someone who has had reason to think hard about life and its meaning. He left a wife and three young children, and says in the lecture that it was really his gift to them so they will know who he was.
Sad. I’d been following his update page since last year, but hadn’t looked for a couple of weeks.