Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, died today from complications from pancreatic cancer. See the full story here.
If you haven't seen his "Last Lecture", it can be viewed on YouTube. I recommend that everyone view it, as it has been an inspiration to thousands of people, has spawned a bestselling book, and has introduced a number of people to a fine individual and one of the truly great educators of our time. In addition to the Last Lecture, I also recommend checking out his lecture on Time Management, given last year at UVA, where he was also a professor for many years.
For those who have watched the lectures, seen him on Oprah or talking to Diane Sawyer, I can tell you that he was every bit as authentic as he seemed. While I was at UVA, Randy was my thesis advisor, and is one of the people most influential to the way that I both conduct myself personally and professionally, along with the methods I use for better engineering and coding. His classes were always extremely entertaining (at least to the folks who got the good grades), and that was one of the main reasons we all learned so much from him.
Unfortunately, I haven't spoken to him since shortly after graduating from college, and sometimes I wondered if he knew just how much he had touched the random lives he intersected through the years, but I'm pretty sure he'd gotten some idea of it through the correspondence he'd gotten after giving the lecture.
Rest in peace, Randy. You will be missed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I'm so happy you had such a wonderful educator helping you at UVA and onward.
dad
Post a Comment