1991 University of Iowa shooting

On Friday, November 1, 1991, Gang Lu, a 28-year-old former graduate student at the University of Iowa, carried out a mass shooting in Iowa City, Iowa. Lu had recently received his doctorate in physics and astronomy from the university in May 1991. According to Wikipedia's account of the event, Lu attended a meeting of the theoretical space plasma physics research group in Room 309 of Van Allen Hall and, shortly after it began, shot three attendees with a .38 Special revolver. He then went to the second floor and shot the chairman of the physics and astronomy department in his office, before returning to the third floor and shooting the initial victims again, killing Robert A. Smith, who had survived the first round of gunfire.

The victims shot in Van Allen Hall were Christoph K. Goertz, a professor of physics and astronomy and Lu's dissertation chairman; Robert A. Smith, an associate professor of physics and astronomy also on Lu's dissertation committee; Linhua Shan, a post-doctoral research investigator and former roommate of Lu's; and Dwight R. Nicholson, chairman of the physics and astronomy department and a member of Lu's dissertation committee.

After the shootings at Van Allen Hall, Lu walked three blocks to Jessup Hall on the university's Pentacrest, entered the office of T. Anne Cleary, the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and a university grievance officer, and shot her in the head. Cleary died the following day at the University of Iowa Hospital. Lu had recently filed grievances related to his dissertation not being nominated for the university's Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize. Lu then shot Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, a 23-year-old temporary student employee in the Office of Academic Affairs, for reasons that remain unknown. She survived but was left paralyzed from the neck down, later dying of inflammatory breast cancer on December 3, 2008. Lu had reportedly intended to also kill university president Hunter Rawlings III, who was attending a football game in Columbus, Ohio, at the time. Lu was found in Jessup Hall with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and died shortly after police arrived, having fired 16 bullets in total.

In the months before the shooting, Lu wrote five letters explaining his reasons for the planned attack, intended for news organizations; these letters have never been publicly released. Lu had studied physics at Peking University before being admitted to the University of Iowa as a graduate student. According to Wikipedia, he was described by at least one fellow graduate student as having exhibited a psychological problem when challenged and abusive tantrums. The case has since been the subject of a personal essay by Jo Ann Beard, a book by Edwin Chen titled "Deadly Scholarship," and a feature film, "Dark Matter."