The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. “I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university,” wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that Brain had died by suicide.
NC State police discovered Brain unresponsive in Engineering Building II on Centennial Campus around 7 am on November 20, following a welfare check request from his wife at 6:40 am, according to The Technician, NC State’s student newspaper. Police confirmed Brain was deceased when they arrived.
Brian Gordon, a reporter for The News and Observer in Raleigh, obtained a copy of Brain’s death certificate and shared it with Ars Technica, confirming the suicide. It marks an abrupt end to a life rich with achievement and the joy of spreading technical knowledge to others.
