Onstage, Mr. Pausch was a frenetic oral billboard, delivering as many one-liners as he did phrases to live by.
"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
When his virtual-reality students won a flight in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration training plane that briefly simulates weightlessness, Mr. Pausch was told faculty members were not allowed to fly. Finding a loophole, he applied to cover it as his team's hometown Web journalist - and got his 25 seconds of floating.
Since 1997, Mr. Pausch had been a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon. With a drama professor, he founded the university's Entertainment Technology Center, which teams students from the arts with those in technology to develop projects.
During the lecture, Mr. Pausch joked that he had become just enough of an expert to fulfill one childhood ambition. World Book sought him out to write its "virtual-reality" entry.
Actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, visited Mr. Pausch's lab at Carnegie Mellon. Mr. Pausch believed that watching Mr. Shatner had taught him leadership skills. After the speech, Mr. Pausch was given a walk-on role in the Star Trek film due out in 2009.
Inside the auditorium, Mr. Pausch dared the crowd to overcome obstacles.
After his applications to become a Disney Imagineer repeatedly were rejected, Mr. Pausch said he talked his way into spending a sabbatical at the company's virtual-reality studio. He helped design virtual-reality rides such as Aladdin's Magic Carpet at Disney World.
Weeks after his book was released, 2.3 million copies of it were in print. It is being published in 29 languages.
By the book's end, Mr. Pausch sounds like a parent imparting advice as fast as he can. The chapters grow shorter as he tries to fit it all in.
In addition to his wife, Jai, and three children, Mr. Pausch is survived by his mother and a sister.
Valerie J. Nelson writes for the Los Angeles Times.
