Richard O’Brien traces his history from an interest in farming to a position in Canada then in the United States. He came to Cornell in Biochemistry and was intimately involved in the founding of the Division of Biological Sciences and the Section of Neurobiology asnd Behavior. After a distinguished career at Cornell, he moved top the University of Rochester as provost, then to the University of Massachusetts where he became president of the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst.