Jason Koski/University Photography

Chemist Tom Ruttledge discusses his career during the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society's Last Lecture series.

"If you had told me back in 1982 that I would be teaching chemistry at Cornell University for a living, I would have thought you were insane," said Tom Ruttledge, senior lecturer of chemistry and chemical biology, April 25 in Uris Auditorium as part of the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society's Last Lecture series.

Ruttledge entered college as a biology major with plans to become a doctor. But in his sophomore year at Wayne State University, he took organic chemistry, which he said, "single-handedly explains" why most pre-med students give up their dreams of medical school.

Although many students filed out of the lecture hall as soon as they realized who was teaching the course -- Robert Bach, rumored to be "the hardest organic [chem] professor at Wayne," Ruttledge sat there, "paralyzed, wondering what was going on."

Ruttledge stayed, and it changed his life and his plan to become a doctor, he said. Bach planted an appreciation of chemistry in Ruttledge, while a biology professor instilled in him the confidence that he could do research. Then, after a particularly grueling physical chemistry exam, Ruttledge and several friends asked the professor, William Hase, to go out for a drink.

"Over those beers began conversations that could never have happened in a classroom," Ruttledge said. "He told us of his love of chemistry, and it was interesting for me to meet a man who loved his field so much."

But when Hase asked if he had ever considered going to grad school in chemistry, Ruttledge shook his head.

"At that time I knew I wasn't going to med school, but I still said it," he recalled. "How many of you are in that position?" Ruttledge asked his audience.

Hase persevered and suggested graduate schools to Ruttledge. Ruttledge listened, and after narrowing his offers down to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago, "everybody said go to Illinois," Ruttledge recalled. "'First of all, it's safer. Second of all, it's safer.'"

Ruttledge, however, was not interested in making the safe choice. "I did what any rational person would do in the face of all the advice I was given," he said. "I ignored it."

After finishing his studies at the University of Chicago, Ruttledge continued to choose new adventures over safer options. As a visiting professor at Whitman College in Washington state, he turned down the offer of a tenure-track position to move back to the East Coast; although he was later offered several tenure-track positions at other colleges, he repeatedly rejected those in favor of new opportunities.

"Do in life what makes you happy," Ruttledge told students. "Don't make choices for other people, because you have to live with those choices. And if you end up in your 40s loving your job, you will be in a great place."

The Last Lecture Series is organized by the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society. The lecture was supported by the ILR School, the ILR Graduate Student Association and the Student Assembly Finance Commission.

Elisabeth Rosen '12 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.