Iowa State University in the context of "Story County, Iowa"

Jack Finegan (July 11, 1908 – July 15, 2000) was an American biblical scholar and Professor of New Testament History and Archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. While a professor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, he published Light from the Ancient Past in 1946. He was notable for his views on biblical chronology.

Ames (/eɪmz/) is a city in Story County, Iowa, United States, located approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Des Moines in central Iowa. It is the home of Iowa State University (ISU). According to the 2020 census, Ames had a population of 66,427, making it the state's ninth-most populous city. Iowa State University was home to 30,177 students as of fall 2023, which make up approximately one half of the city's population.

A United States Department of Energy national laboratory, Ames Laboratory, is located on the ISU campus. Ames also hosts United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sites: the largest federal animal disease center in the United States, the USDA Agricultural Research Service's National Animal Disease Center (NADC), as well as one of two national USDA sites for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which comprises the National Veterinary Services Laboratory and the Center for Veterinary Biologics. Ames also hosts the headquarters of the Iowa Department of Transportation.

Charles Roy Henderson ((1911-04-01)April 1, 1911 – (1989-03-14)March 14, 1989) was an American statistician and a pioneer in animal breeding — the application of quantitative methods for the genetic evaluation of domestic livestock. This is critically important because it allows farmers and geneticists to predict whether a crop or animal will have a desired trait, and to what extent the trait will be expressed. He developed mixed model equations to obtain best linear unbiased predictions of breeding values and, in general, any random effect. He invented three methods for the estimation of variance components in unbalanced settings of mixed models, and invented a method for constructing the inverse of Wright's numerator relationship matrix based on a simple list of pedigree information. He, with his Ph.D. student Shayle R. Searle, greatly extended the use of matrix notation in statistics. His methods are widely used by the domestic livestock industry throughout the world and are a cornerstone of linear model theory.

Henderson obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc.(nutrition) and Ph.D.(breeding) degrees at Iowa State University, where he was a student of Professor L. N. Hazel. Henderson joined the faculty of the Department of Animal Science at Cornell University in 1948 and headed the Animal Breeding division for nearly 30 years until he retired in 1976. After retiring from Cornell, he was a visiting professor at the University of Guelph and University of Illinois until his death. He completed his book in 1984 at the University of Guelph.

The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax (a portmanteau of "America" and "anthrax", from its FBI case name), occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting seventeen others. Capitol police officers and staffers working for Senator Russ Feingold were exposed as well. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement". They are the only lethal attacks to have used anthrax outside of warfare.

The FBI and CDC authorized Iowa State University to destroy its anthrax archives in October 2001, which hampered the investigation. Thereafter, a major focus in the early years of the investigation was bioweapons expert Steven Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated. Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, became a focus around April 4, 2005. On April 11, 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that he was "an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks". On July 29, 2008, Ivins died by suicide with an overdose of acetaminophen (paracetamol).

Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd vice president of the United States, serving from 1941 to 1945, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He served as the 11th U.S. secretary of agriculture and the 10th U.S. secretary of commerce. He was the nominee of the new Progressive Party in the 1948 presidential election.

The oldest son of Henry C. Wallace, who served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1921 to 1924, Wallace was born in rural Iowa in 1888. After graduating from Iowa State University in 1910, he worked as a writer and editor for his family's farm journal, Wallaces' Farmer. He also founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, a hybrid corn company that became extremely successful. Wallace displayed intellectual curiosity about a wide array of subjects, including statistics and economics, and explored various religious and spiritual movements, including Theosophy. After his father's death in 1924, Wallace drifted away from the Republican Party; he supported Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election.