The "last lecturer" passes

Randy Pausch, the professor whose "last lecture" became a runaway phenomenon on the Internet and was turned into a best-selling book, died Friday of pancreatic cancer.

Pausch, 47, a computer science professor, delivered the lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007, a month after being told he had three to six months to live because his cancer had returned.


The lecture has been viewed more than 3.2 million times since it was posted on YouTube in December.

The university's president, Jared Cohon, described Pausch as "a brilliant researcher and gifted teacher." Pausch describes Cohon urging him to talk about having fun in his lecture, and telling him it's difficult because it's like asking a fish to talk about water.

Excerpts from CNN.com