July 25, 2008—Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch ’82, who faced his own impending death by showing millions of people how to live, died this morning at his Virginia home.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live, Pausch responded last September 12 by delivering a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon called "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." A videotape of the lecture became a YouTube hit and Pausch expanded its text into a best-selling book called The Last Lecture. Full of humor and common sense, and addressed to his three young children, who were asleep in bed at the time, the lecture urged listeners to dream and play and to not allow obstacles to discourage them. Pausch described how he had achieved most of his childhood dreams. "I've been very fortunate that way," he said. "I'm a professor, there should be some lessons learned, and how you use the stuff you hear today to achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others. And as you get older, you may find that enabling-the-dreams-of-others thing is even more fun."

Managing Editor Charlotte Bruce Harvey ’78 wrote a feature-length profile of Pausch for the November/December 2007 BAM.