"Professor Riley," as he was generally known, was born in Chelsea, London, England, on September 19, 1843. He attended boarding school at Dieppe, France and Bonn, Germany. Passionately fond of natural history, drawing, and painting, he collected and studied insects and sketched them in pencil and in color. At both Dieppe and Bonn, he won prizes in drawing and was encouraged to pursue art as a career.
At the age of 17, he came to the United States and settled on an Illinois farm about 50 miles from Chicago. Soon his attention was drawn to insect injuries of crops, and he sent accounts of his observations to the Prairie Farmer. At the age of 21, Riley moved to Chicago and worked for this leading agricultural journal as a reporter, artist, and editor of its entomological department. His writings attracted the attention of Benjamin D. Walsh, the Illinois State entomologist. It was through Walsh's influence as well as the recommendation of N .J. Coleman of Coleman's Rural World that Riley was appointed in the spring of 1868 to the newly created office of entomologist of the State of Missouri. From 1868 to 1877, in collaboration with T.W. Harris, B.D. Walsh, and Asa Fitch, Riley published nine annual reports as State Entomologist of Missouri, which unequivocally established his reputation as an eminent entomologist. Today, authorities agree that these nine reports constitute the foundation of modern entomology.
From 1873 to 1877, many Western States and territories were invaded by grasshoppers from the Northwest. In some states their destruction of crops was so serious that it caused starvation among pioneer families. Riley studied this plague and published results in his last three Missouri annual reports and worked to bring it to the attention of Congress. In March 1877, he succeeded in securing passage of a bill creating the United States Entomological Commission, the Grasshopper Commission administered under the Director of the Geological Survey of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Riley was appointed chairman, A.S. Packard, Jr., secretary, and Cyrus Thomas, treasurer.
All this time, Riley, with the help of Otto Lugger, Theodore Pergrande, and others, was also making brilliant contributions to the knowledge of the biology of insects. Besides studying the life cycles of the 13 and 17 year cicadas, he also studied the remarkable Yucca moth and its pollination of the Yucca flower, a matter of special evolutionary interest to Charles Darwin. In addition, he conducted intensive life history studies of blister beetles and their unusual triungulin larvae, and the caprification of the fig.
In the spring of 1878, Townend Glover retired as entomologist to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Riley was appointed his successor. After a year in this position, Riley resigned owing to a disagreement with the Commissioner of Agriculture over Riley's practice of making independent political contacts; he then continued the work of the U.S. Entomological Commission with others, from his home. Two years later, after the inauguration of President James A. Garfield in 1881, Riley was reappointed and remained chief of the Federal Entomological Service until June 1894, when the Service was renamed the Division of Entomology of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1882, Riley gave part of his insect collection to the U.S. National Museum, now The Smithsonian Institution, at which time he was made honorary curator of insects. In 1885, he was appointed assistant curator of the Museum, thus becoming the Museum's first curator of insects, whereupon he gave the Museum his entire insect collection consisting of 115,000 mounted specimens (representing 20,000 species), 2,800 vials, and 3,000 slides of specimens mounted in Canadian balsam.
One of Riley's greatest triumphs while Chief of the Federal Entomological Service was his initiation of efforts to collect parasites and predators of the cottony cushion scale, which was destroying the citrus industry in California. In 1888, he sent Albert Koebele to Australia to collect natural enemies of the scale. A beetle, Vedalia cardinalis, now Rodolia cardinalis, was introduced into California and significantly reduced populations of the cottony cushion scale. This effort gave great impetus to the study of biological control for the reduction of injurious pests and established Charles Valentine Riley as the "Father of the Biological Control." For a review of the cottony cushion scale project, see Doutt, 1958.
A prolific writer and artist, Riley authored over 2,400 publications. He also published two journals, the American Entomologist (1868-80) and Insect Life (1889-94). Riley received many honors during his lifetime. He was decorated by the French Government for his work on the grapevine Phylloxera. He received honorary degrees from Kansas State University and the University of Missouri. He was an honorary member of the Entomological Society of London and founder and first president of the Entomological Society of Washington. He and Dr. L.O. Howard, Riley's assistant in the Federal Entomological Service, were among the founders of the American Association of Economic Entomologists, which became part of Entomological Society of America in 1953.
Tragically, on September 14, 1895 Riley's life was cut short by a fatal bicycle accident. As he was riding rapidly down a hill, the bicycle wheel struck a granite paving block dropped by a wagon. He catapulted to the pavement and fractured his skull. He was carried home on a wagon and never regained consciousness. He died at his home the same day at the age of 52, leaving his wife with six children.
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