Sterling Hall bombing

Sterling Hall bombing
Part of the Opposition to US involvement in Vietnam
Sterling Hall
Location	Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Date	August 24, 1970 3:42 am (UTC-5)
Target	Army Mathematics Research Center, Sterling Hall, UW–Madison
Attack type	School car bombing
Weapons	Car bomb (Ammonium nitrate)
Deaths	1
Non-fatal injuries	3
Perpetrators	Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine and Leo Burt
Motive	Protest against the Vietnam War

The Sterling Hall Bombing that occurred on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus on August 24, 1970 was committed by four young people as a protest against the university's research connections with the US military during the Vietnam War. It resulted in the death of a university physics researcher and injuries to three others.

Sterling Hall is a centrally located building on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. 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 caused massive destruction to other parts of the building and nearby buildings as well. It resulted in the death of the researcher Robert Fassnacht, injured three others and caused significant destruction to the physics department and its equipment. Neither Fassnacht nor the physics department itself was involved with or employed by the Army Mathematics Research Center. The bombers used a Ford Econoline van stolen from a University of Wisconsin professor of Computer Science. It was filled with close to 2,000 pounds (910 kg) of ANFO (i.e., ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). Pieces of the van were found on top of an eight-story building three blocks away and 26 nearby buildings were damaged; however, the targeted AMRC was scarcely damaged. Total damage to University of Wisconsin–Madison property was over $2.1 million ($12 million today) as a result of the bombing.

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.

The staff at the center, at the time of the bombing, consisted of about 45 mathematicians, about 30 of them full-time. Rosser was well known for his research in pure mathematics, logic (Rosser's trick, the Kleene–Rosser paradox, and the Church-Rosser theorem) and in number theory (Rosser sieve). Rosser had been the head of the U.S. ballistics program during World War II and also had contributed to research on several missiles used by the U.S. military.