Randy Pausch, a university professor who developed a “last lecture” honoring life in his confrontation with incurable cancer, died on Friday at the age of 47.

His “Last Lecture” made him famous, since it shortly became a major Internet sensation and a bestselling book. However, ten months after giving his speech, the dreadful disease claimed its rights and Randy Pausch died at his home in Chesapeake, Va., Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught for 10 years, wrote on its Web site.

The computer science professor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006 and only a year later he delivered his 76-minute “last lecture”, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”

In April, a book based on the speech, “The Last Lecture”, was published and topped the nonfiction best-seller records, maintaining its position this week as well. According to the Associated Press, the book deal was described to value more than $6 million.

Randy Pausch said he had dictated the book to Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey Zaslow by cell phone and the co-writer informed the Associated Press that those had been the “most fun” 53 days of his life.

“It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it’s about how to lead your life,” Pausch told the audience in his speech last autumn. “If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.”

Pausch was born in 1960 and received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon.

He co-founded Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, a master’s course aimed to gather artists and engineers at the same place. He also invented an animation-based teaching program called “Alice” intended to educate high school and college students in computer programming.

Randy Pausch is survived by his wife, Jai, and their three children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe as well as his mother, Virginia Pausch, and a sister, Tamara Mason.

The family will organize a private burial in Virginia, where the professor and his family moved last autumn. A campus memorial service is also due to be arranged, the university announced.