Randy Pausch’s last lecture

Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. In September 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. He pursued a very aggressive cancer treatment that included major surgery and experimental chemotherapy; however, in August 2007, he was told the cancer had metastasized to his liver and spleen and given months to live.
Pausch delivered his ‘Last Lecture’, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” at CMU on 18 September 2007. This talk was modelled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and then give a hypothetical “final talk” i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” It has had a great deal of publicity and impact in the USA.
You can see a video of the 10 minute lecture here.
Actually Pausch is still alive and still fighting his cancer and you can read his up-dates here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

One Comment

  • Irene
    June 4th, 2008 at 7:28 am

    How inspiring Randy Pausch is! If you liked “The Last Lecture”, another fantastic memoir I just read and highly recommend is “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Her TEDTalk video (ted.com) has been seen as many times as The Last Lecture I think, and Oprah did 4 shows on her book, so there are a lot of similarities. In My Stroke of Insight, there’s a happy ending though. It’s an incredible story! I hear they’re making it into a movie.