Dr. Courtney Shah, a 7-time champion of “Jeopardy!”, has died at age 52 after a battle with brain cancer.
Shah, who was a professor at Lower Columbia College for nearly 20 years, passed away peacefully at her home on Wednesday morning, according to local radio station KLOG.
“I don’t know what you believe about death, but I like to think that she’s at peace now. We loved her in this world, and we loved her out of this world, and we’ll go on loving her,” her heartbroken daughter Maya Shah wrote in an update on a Caring Bridge page.
“Thank you for your grace in all of this. It hasn’t been easy, it will continue not to be easy,” she continued, adding, “Hug your loved ones.”
The late academic competed on “Jeopardy!” in 2021 and earned $118,558 across a 7-game win streak — also winning $2,000 for her second-place finish in her eighth game, according to J! Archive.
She also competed in the 2022 Tournament of Champions.
“I really never imagined I would get here,” she said in a behind-the-scenes video after her fifth game. “I’m not quite sure that this is actually reality yet.”
Shah had been receiving hospice care at home and learned in March that radiation and chemotherapy treatments were not effective, her family wrote on CaringBridge.
Even while battling illness, Shah was still “firing off Jeopardy answers before anyone else in the room,” according to family posts on that site.
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