Free Republic

US professor Randy Pausch, who shot to global fame because of the inspirational "Last Lecture" he delivered just weeks after learning he had terminal cancer, died Friday, the university where he taught said. "He died today," Alyssa Mayfield, a spokeswoman for Carnegie Mellon University, where Pausch had taught computer science since 1997, told AFP. Pausch was 47. Celebrated in his chosen field and praised as an inspirational teacher, Pausch sprang to worldwide fame for his "Last Lecture," delivered at Carnegie Mellon on September 18 last year after he learned he was dying of pancreatic cancer and had months to live....

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose final lecture inspired millions, has died of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pausch, 47, who turned the lecture into a book, said that no one would have been interested in his words of wisdom were he not a man in his 40s with a terminal illness, leaving behind a wife and three young children. According to Dr. Pausch's Web site, a biopsy last week revealed that the cancer had progressed further than expected, based on recent PETscans.