On November 1, 1991, 47-year-old Christoph K. Goertz, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, was killed during a mass shooting in Van Allen Hall. The attacker, identified as 28-year-old former graduate student Gang Lu, entered a meeting room and opened fire, fatally wounding Goertz among others before moving to additional locations on campus.

Reports describe the shooting as a planned act driven by the gunman’s professional grievances after being passed over for an academic award. In all, five people were killed and one person was seriously injured; the shooter died by suicide shortly after the attacks, and no arrests were made.

Goertz is remembered as a respected educator whose life and work were cut short in an act that deeply affected the university community.