Setting fire to imaginations

Since then, Riley has supervised 13 doctoral
students, three postdoctoral researchers and
three master’s degree candidates. He’s taught
dozens of classes, served on countless national
committees and authored nearly 150 papers.
the Spider-man character Ben Reilly. (Riley is a
fan of the comic.)
He also learned just how special gamma rays
were because of Alison.
Riley sat with his mentor, chemistry and
physics Professor Emeritus Raymond
Sheline, in 2011. In fact, Riley holds the title
of Raymond K. Sheline Professor of Physics.
Sheline served on the Florida State faculty
from 1951 to 1998.
U.S. Naval Academy Professor Daryl J. Hartley,
who earned his doctorate under Riley’s supervision,
wrote a letter supporting Riley’s nomination for
the Lawton professorship last year.
“Now that I know almost all of the major
research professors in the field of nuclear
structure, if I could choose any professor at any
school, I would not hesitate to choose Mark
Riley as my adviser again,” Hartley wrote.
On top of that, he and Alison have raised two
sons, Daniel and Jonathan. And Daniel and
his wife, Stephanie, who are both FSU grads,
recently made the Rileys grandparents with a
grandson named Ben — a sneaky reference to
In 2001, his wife, who was then finishing her
doctorate at Florida State, was diagnosed with a
brain tumor, and the initial surgery failed.
Surgeons at Shands then opted to try a unique
procedure in which gamma rays zapped the
tumor. This time the surgery was successful.
“Gamma rays to the rescue,” Riley joked.
In a 2003 radio interview at FSU, he took on
a more serious tone, noting that gamma rays
truly had “saved her.”
“And they saved me, because I do not know
what I would do without her,” he added.
Riley rarely misses an opportunity to pull out
his Albert Einstein costume. Here, he entertains
a child during a recent “Flying Circus of Physics”
educational outreach event.
Photo courtesy Mark Riley
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