US 'Last Lecture 'professor Randy Pausch dies

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

WASHINGTON(AFP) — 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.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just the way we play the hand," Pausch said in the lecture, which was laced...