The bomb, set off at 3:42 am on August 24, 1970, was intended to destroy the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) housed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of the building.

It resulted in the death of the researcher Robert Fassnacht, injured three others and caused significant destruction to the physics department and its equipment.

The bombers used a Ford Econoline van stolen from a University of Wisconsin professor of computer sciences.

[8] During the Vietnam War, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the southern (east-west) wing of Sterling Hall housed the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC).

This was an Army-funded think tank, directed by J. Barkley Rosser, Sr.[citation needed] The staff at the center, at the time of the bombing, consisted of about 45 mathematicians, about 30 of them full-time.

[citation needed] The money to build a home for AMRC came from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) in 1955.

The University of Wisconsin student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, obtained and published quarterly reports that AMRC submitted to the Army.

The Cardinal published a series of investigative articles making a convincing case that AMRC was pursuing research that was directly pursuant to specific U.S. Department of Defense requests, and relevant to counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam.

"[citation needed] The Army Mathematics Research Center was phased out by the Department of Defense at the end of the 1970 fiscal year.

[3] Before the Sterling Hall bombing, Karl had committed other acts of anti-war violence, including setting fire to an ROTC installation at the University of Wisconsin Armory (the Red Gym), and bombing what he thought was the State's Selective Service headquarters but turned out to be the University of Wisconsin Primate Research Center.

In the early 2000s, he opened a deli called Radical Rye on State Street near the UW–Madison campus, which he operated until it was displaced by the development of the Overture Center.

After a few months, he left the commune, traveled first to Vancouver and then on to San Francisco, where he connected with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) which was holding Patty Hearst at the time.

[16] After being released from prison, he returned to Madison and worked for Union Cab until January 2001, when he purchased the Radical Rye Deli with his brother.

On January 7, 1976, he was captured in San Rafael, California, and sentenced to seven years in federal prison for his part in the bombing, of which he served three.

Quin, a postdoctoral physics researcher, and Sutler, a university security officer, suffered cuts from shattered glass and bruises.