page_title: Albert Koebele
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Koebele / Early career
caption_attribution_description: American entomologists c. 1913
context_page_description: Albert Koebele was an economic entomologist and a pioneer in the use of biological controls to manage insect pests.
context_section_description: Koebele was born in Waldkirch, Germany, in 1853. There are no details about his early life but in 1873 he immigrated to the United States, settled in New York, and became a naturalized citizen in 1880. By this time he was a member of the Brooklyn Entomological Society and had demonstrated great skill at preserving and mounting insects. Charles Valentine Riley, the noted federal entomologist, was impressed by these skills and offered Koebele a job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Koebele promptly accepted the offer and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1881.
  Riley sent his new employee to the South in 1882 to study the cotton worm, the larva of a moth (Alabama argillacea) that originated in South America but had become a serious pest for cotton growers in the United States. The following year Koebele traveled to Brazil where he studied cotton pests and collected a large number of insect specimens.
caption: Koebele and other entomologists c. 1913
exif: {}