Dr. Charles A. "Chuck" Triplehorn, Professor Emeritus of Entomology in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, passed away on August 25, 2022, at age 94. Dr. Triplehorn was a longtime faculty member at OSU who needs little introduction. He was a world-famous taxonomist and Coleopterist but more importantly he was a beloved mentor and colleague.
Professor Triplehorn received his BS (1949) from the Department of Zoology and MS (1952) from the Department of Entomology from The Ohio State University. He was Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Delaware from 1952 to 1954. He then went on to earn his PhD from Cornell University in 1957. He returned to Ohio State in 1957, working first at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, and the joining the faculty of the Department of Entomology in Columbus in 1962. In the years from 1965 to 1966 Dr. Triplehorn worked on assignment with the Agency for International Development in Piracicaba, Brazil and with Food for Peace in Rio de Janeiro. As a faculty member, he also served as Curator of the Ohio State Insect Collection from 1962 until his retirement in 1992. In 2005 the insect collection was rechristened as the Charles A. Triplehorn Insect Collection in his honor.
Dr. Triplehorn was a specialist on beetles, and his research focused on documenting the diversity of these insects, particularly in the Americas. His near 120 published works were devoted to understanding beetles: how to identify them, how they are interrelated, the details of their geographic distribution, and how they evolved through time.
Dr. Triplehorn is a co-author of the well-known textbook, Introduction to the Study of Insects. This text was first published in 1954, the product of Ohio State professors Donald J. Borror and Dwight M. DeLong. Professor Triplehorn joined with them to produce the fourth edition in 1976. The text, now in its seventh edition, is still used and recognized worldwide, and it has been translated into Portuguese, Arabic, and Indonesian.
Dr. Triplehorn’s national reputation among his peers was recognized through his election as President of the North Central Branch of the Entomological Society of America in 1985 and subsequently as national President in 1986. In 1991 he was made an Honorary Member of the Entomological Society of America. He was also an Honorary Member of the Coleopterists Society, an international organization dedicated to the study of beetles, and served as its President in 1976.
Dr. Triplehorn’s depth of knowledge of the natural world – of insects and beetles in particular – and his skills as a raconteur made him memorable teacher to generations of undergraduate students, a beloved mentor to his graduate students and postdocs, and a valued ambassador for the University, College, Department, Museum of Biological Diversity, and the eponymous Insect Collection. He pointed with pride to the success of his students as his greatest accomplishment in academia.
Link to obituary: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/dublin-oh/charles-triplehorn-...
C. A. Triplehorn Insect Collection
The Triplehorn Insect Collection is comprised of over 4 million specimens, including one of the world's largest leafhopper collections. Initiated by Professor Josef N. Knull in 1934, the collection has strong holdings in the Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, Odonata, and Orthoptera. Ongoing research is focused on the systematics of parasitic wasps. In 2021 the Triplehorn Collection was awarded nearly half a million dollars from the National Science Foundation for the curation and upgrade of the beetle holdings, which number in the hundreds of thousands.
