Gang Lu

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Gang Lu (surname Lu; Chinese: 卢刚) was a Chinese physics student enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa. On Friday, Nov. 1, 1991 with a .38 caliber revolver and a .22-caliber handgun , he shot five people to death and seriously wounded another before committing suicide.

The people he killed were Christoph K. Goertz (his advisor), Linhua Shan (a fellow Ph.D student from China), Dwight R. Nicholson (department chair), Robert Alan Smith (associate professor, Lu's co-advisor), and T. Anne Cleary (vice President for Academic Affairs at UI). A student employee, Miya Sioson was shot in her spine, permanently paralyzing her arms and legs.

Gang Lu wrote five letters explaining his reasons and plans months before his actions. According to university officials, four of the letters were in English and were intended to be sent to news organizations, and one was written in Chinese.

The real reasons for the tragedy are still unknown today because Lu's letters have never been released to the public. The major reason cited by University officials was that Lu was angry and jealous because he believed his doctoral dissertation deserved a prestigious academic award but it was actually awarded to Linhua Shan. However, some people doubted this account.

Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the killings. The essay, called "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker, appeared in the 1997 edition of Best American Essays, and was the title essay in her memoir, published in 1998. Beard worked as an editor for a physics journal at the university and was a colleague of the victims, working closely with several of them.