We’ve written before about the late Randy Pausch, the former U.Va. computer science professor whose wisdom-filled “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh – delivered after being diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer – became an Internet sensation, which in turn spawned a book and many national media appearances.
Pausch died in July 2008, but not before returning to U.Va. for another “last lecture” of sorts, this one focusing on time management.
Now comes word that his last employer, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has dedicated a 230-foot-long pedestrian bridge in his honor (as was announced at the end of his original last lecture). The bridge connects the school’s Gates Center for Computer Science and its Purnell Center for the Arts — a concrete manifestation of an academic link that Pausch actively promoted in his lifetime.
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engineering @ 10/28/2009 |
U.Va. computer science professor Gabriel Robins, whose friendship with Randy Pausch continued long after Pausch left U.Va.’s faculty, circulated a nice e-mail to his current colleagues that landed in our in-box here at UVA Today.
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People,
engineering @ 08/11/2009 |
You may remember Randy Pausch, whose “Last Lecture” was a YouTube sensation a few years back before he tragically died from cancer in 2008. Before teaching at Carnegie Mellon, Pausch was a U.Va. professor for nine years and after the jump, are the contents of an e-mail from the Carnegie Mellon University Media Relations Office detailing the fulfillment of one of Randy’s final wishes — he will appear in the new version of Star Trek which opens in theaters this weekend.
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Gabe Robins (computer science) has noted that Google paid a rare tribute to Randy Pausch with a link on its main search page. As Gabe noted in an e-mail to colleagues Sunday, the tribute is as elegant as it is remarkable with the single small line “In Memoriam: Randy Pausch (1960-2008)” and a link to the original Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon.
Google News counts more than 1,000 stories today about Randy Pausch’s death on Friday. Pausch, who taught computer science at the University from 1988 to 1997, inspired millions with a lecture he gave last September at Carnegie Mellon, where he had been a member of the faculty since leaving U.Va. That lecture, given as part of CMU’s last lecture series, was titled “Live Your Childhood Dreams” and has been called “the lecture of a lifetime” by the Wall Street Journal. It was presented a year after Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Once the lecture was made available on the Carnegie Mellon Web site, it became an international phenomenon. As of Friday, 3,207,553 viewers have watched the lecture on YouTube.
The Daily Progress’ story on Pausch’s death has comments from U.Va computer science professors Gabe Robins and Alf Weaver. One of Weaver’s comments is especially poignant: “The way he faced his illness was quintessential Randy,” Weaver said. “Everything was straight on, full face, in your face.”
The Wall Street Journal, which was largely responsible for the spread of the last lecture, has a remembrance by Jeffrey Zaslow, co-author of a book with Pausch. The Zaslow piece also has an interesting video. The Los Angeles Times features a slide show of Pausch images, including one by Daily Progress photographer Kaylin Bowers from Pausch’s lecture on time management at U.Va. in November. Here’s a link to the UVA Today story, too.
