On a snowy Friday afternoon in Iowa City, Iowa, the academic tranquility of the University of Iowa was shattered by a sudden and tragic outbreak of violence. It was November 1, 1991, a day that would end in the death of Dr. Robert A. Smith, a 45-year-old White / Caucasian male and an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the university. He was one of several victims in a meticulously planned shooting spree carried out by a former graduate student.
The perpetrator was Gang Lu, a
recent doctoral graduate from the university's physics and astronomy department. Lu was reportedly embittered after his dissertation was not nominated for a prestigious academic award, a distinction he believed was crucial for securing his future career prospects. This professional disappointment spiraled into a deadly rampage. On that fateful afternoon, Lu entered Van Allen Hall, where a meeting of the theoretical space plasma physics research group was underway. Armed with a. 38-caliber revolver, he opened fire, shooting Dr. Smith, Professor Christoph K. Goertz, and a postdoctoral research investigator named Linhua Shan.
After the initial volley of shots, Lu's calculated violence continued. He moved to another floor of Van Allen Hall and shot and killed the chairman of the physics and astronomy department, Dwight R. Nicholson. From there, Lu walked across the campus to Jessup Hall, where he targeted and killed T. Anne Cleary, the associate vice president for academic affairs, and seriously wounded a student employee. His path of destruction ended when he turned the gun on himself.
The suspect in the killings, Gang Lu, acted alone and died by suicide shortly after his attack. Consequently, there were no arrests made in connection with the murders of Dr. Robert A. Smith and the other victims. The Iowa City community was left to grapple with the profound loss of several esteemed members of its academic community in a senseless act of violence that stemmed from the frustrated ambitions of a single individual.
