Randy Pausch

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There were times when Randy Pausch's sheer exuberance, physical and spiritual, made it easy to imagine it would end some other way. We could watch his "Last Lecture" on YouTube, receive the gift he was giving us and reject the idea that it would come at an ultimate price--that Pausch would indeed die one day of pancreatic cancer, as he did on July 25 at the age of 47.

"You cannot change the cards you are dealt," he said, "just how you play the hand." With his child's smile and nimble brain and breathtakingly simple instructions tumbling out one after another, Pausch made the infernally complex machine that is modern life look as if anyone could put it together with the right tools and the right crib sheet. Come on, he seemed to say, you can do this; I have the secrets, and I'm giving them to you--for free.

A popular computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he delivered his "Last Lecture" on Sept. 18, 2007. It became an Internet sensation, with a global audience charmed by his easy manner and insight, in awe of his complete lack of self-pity. It was as though he already knew more than he should, had dipped a ways into eternity and brought back some pieces for the rest of us to use in whatever ways and for whatever time we can. The end of the lecture, it turned out, was just the beginning.