It's a dreaded disease. The fourth-highest cause of cancer deaths in the United States, it's usually portrayed as an unstoppable, incurable killer. It has struck some high-profile figures: Hollywood actor Patrick Swayze has been diagnosed with it. Opera star Luciano Pavarotti and former Ronald Reagan aide Michael Deaver died of it. So, too, on July 25, did Randy Pausch, the former Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose "last lecture" before a university audience became a YouTube sensation and a best-selling book. ...more

August 11, 2008

Regarding "Carnegie Mellon Professor's Dream Filled Life Ends At 47" (front page, July 26): ...more

August 2, 2008

Randy Pausch, a terminally ill professor whose earnest farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University became an Internet phenomenon and best-selling book that turned him into a symbol for living and dying well, died Friday at his home in Chesapeake, Va., of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. ...more

July 26, 2008

"The Last Lecture" (Hyperion, $21.95), a best seller written by a professor dying of pancreatic cancer and a Wall Street Journal writer, is the perfect example of how the Internet is changing publishing and what people read. ...more

June 1, 2008