Cartoonist Scott Adams who created the Dilbert comic strip, died on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, months after he announced that he had prostate cancer. He was 68 years old.

Adams’ Dilbert strip is a white collar workplace satire based on his experiences working in offices. At one point, the strip was in around 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries. It was adapted into an animated series, video game, and multiple books.

Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York. He studied economics and earned an MBA from UC Berkeley, then spent several years working for Crocker National Bank and the Pacific Bell telephone company. For those companies, he worked as a teller, computer programmer, product manager, and had other jobs on the corporate ladder.

It was while working at Pacific Bell that Adams began drawing the Dilbert strip. The titular character deals with office politics, micromanaging, technological hiccups, clueless managers, and other typical annoyances found in office settings.

Later in his life, Adams made inflammatory comments suggesting that white people “get the hell away from Black people” and even called Black people a “hate group.” He expressed other controversial opinions about race, the Holocaust, men’s rights, and COVID-19 vaccines. His comments led to the widespread cancellation of the Dilbert strip in 2023.