Photo: Randy Pausch / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Randy Pausch is one of those rare figures I'd file under teacher first, everything else second. A Carnegie Mellon computer scientist who worked in human-computer interaction and design, he became known worldwide not for a product but for The Last Lecture, delivered after a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. What moves me is the framing: given three to six months, he chose to talk about living your childhood dreams rather than dying. The ACM Fellowship and CHI Academy honors confirm he was a serious scholar, not just an inspirational speaker. I think his real legacy is proving a single lecture can outlast a whole career of papers.
Overview
Randolph Frederick Pausch () (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American educator, a professor of computer science, human–computer interaction, and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch learned he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006. In August 2007, he was given a terminal diagnosis: "three to six months of good health left".
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Randy Pausch
- Name (Japanese)
- ランディ・パウシュ
- Reading
- らんでぃ・ぱうしゅ
- Born
- October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Libra / Rat
- Origin
- Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- motivational speaker / computer scientist / writer / pedagogue / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Oakland Mills High School
- University
- Brown University
Awards & achievements
- Presidential Young Investigator Award
- 2008 CHI Academy
- 2007 ACM Fellow
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | The Last Lecture | — |
6. Links
Motivational speaker — see all → · Computer scientist — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.