Gang Lu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gang Lu

Born 1963
Beijing, China
Died November 1, 1991 (aged 28)
Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Cause of death Self-inflicted gunshot
Nationality Chinese
Education Graduate student
Known for University of Iowa shooting

Gang Lu (c. 1963 – November 1, 1991) (surname Lu; Chinese: 卢刚 Lú Gāng) was the gunman in the University of Iowa shooting. He was a graduate student in physics at the university. He was 28 when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after shooting and killing five people and seriously wounding a sixth.

Contents

[edit] Motives and events leading to the shooting

Lu had received his doctoral degree the previous May. Months before the shootings, he wrote five letters explaining the reasons for his planned actions. According to university officials, four of the letters are in English and were intended to be sent to news organizations. One is in Chinese. The letters have not been released to the public. According to the university, Lu said in the letters that he was angry and jealous that his doctoral dissertation had not received a prestigious academic award. Linhua Shan, another student, had received the award.

[edit] University of Iowa Shooting

On Friday, November 1, 1991, using a .38-caliber revolver and a .22 caliber handgun, he shot and killed five people on the Iowa campus in Iowa City, seriously wounded and paralyzed another, and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

Those killed in Van Allen Hall, the physics department's building, were Christoph K. Goertz, a professor in the department and Lu's academic advisor; Dwight R. Nicholson, chairman of the physics and astronomy department; Robert Alan Smith, an assistant professor; and Shan, the fellow physics graduate student, also from China. T. Anne Cleary, the assistant vice president for academic affairs, was killed in Jessup Hall, the main administration building, where a student employee, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, was shot in the spine, permanently paralyzing her arms and legs.

[edit] Writings and films

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 later published in her collection of personal essays, The Boys of My Youth. 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.

Based on Gang Lu's story, director Chen Shi-zheng made a feature film, Dark Matter, starring Liu Ye and Meryl Streep. The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.[1]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Overbye, "A Tale of Power and Intrigue in the Lab, Based on Real Life."

[edit] Books

  • Chen, Edwin (1995). Deadly Scholarship: The True Story of Lu Gang and Mass Murder in America's Heartland. Carol Publishing Corporation. ISBN 155972241X. 

[edit] Web

Languages