Charles Lester Marlatt

Charles Lester Marlatt (1863–1954) was an American entomologist. Born in 1863 at Atchison, Kansas, he was educated at Kansas State Agricultural College (B.S., 1884; M.S., 1886), where he was assistant professor for two years. He is the person who introduced the ladybug insect Chilocorus similis into the United States to control the San Jose scale insect, which was first discovered in San Jose, California in 1880 by John Henry Comstock and named by him. Marlatt worked for the Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture. In 1912 he was appointed chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board. He was president of the Entomological Society of Washington in 1897–98 and of the American Association of Economic Entomologists in 1899.

His 1907 description of periodic cicadas remains a classic in the field. In this article, Marlatt proposed a grouping of periodic cicadas into 30 different broods, each given a Roman numeral. Broods I–XVII assigned brood numbers for each of 17 sequential calendar years to 17-year cicadas. Broods XVIII–XXX assigned 13 sequential calendar years to 13-year cicadas. Subsequent research has established that, in fact, not every year produces a brood of periodical cicadas. There are only 15 distinct broods, not 30, but Marlatt's scheme continues to be used.

Marlatt's red brick home in Washington, DC was built in 1908 and remained in family hands until it was sold in 1970. Located at 1521 16th Street, NW, the Marlatt family maintained the building until selling it in 1970. From 1973 to 1975 the Marlatt Mansion was owned by the government of the USSR, which used it to house the Soviet Embassy’s Office of the Commercial Counselor, as well as offices of the KGB. During that time it is believed to have served as the temporary residence of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (source: https://www.iwp.edu/why-iwp/visit-and-contact/). Since 1994 it has served as the main campus building of a private, regionally-accredited graduate school of intelligence and statecraft, The Institute of World Politics. One of Marlatt's granddaughters, a retired CIA officer, visited the mansion in the 1990s.