1991 University of Iowa shooting

On Friday, November 1, 1991, Gang Lu attended a meeting for the theoretical space plasma physics research group in a conference room on the third floor of Van Allen Hall at the university's campus.

Lu then shot Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, a 23-year-old student temporary employee in the Office of Academic Affairs, for unknown reasons.

[4] Lu had intended to kill university president Hunter Rawlings III, but he was attending the Iowa/Ohio State football game in Columbus, Ohio, at the time.

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 led many Chinese students to become eager to stay in the United States, and Lu believed that winning the prize would have made it easier for him to get a job and not have to return to China.

[8] In the months prior to the shooting, Lu was still living in Iowa City and wrote five letters explaining the reasons for his planned actions.

However, Edwin Chen's book Deadly Scholarship includes a statement by Lu intended to be read after his attack and suicide, which Laura Hamlett[who?]

Loosely based on Gang Lu's story, Chinese director Chen Shi-zheng made a feature film, Dark Matter, starring Liu Ye and Meryl Streep.