SABINE, PAUL EARLS

(b. Albion, Illinois, 22 January 1879; d. Colorado Springs, Colorado, 28 December 1958)

acoustics.

Sabine was the son of a Methodist minister. After graduating from McKendree College in 1899 he went to Harvard University, where his cousin, Wallace Clement Sabine, was on the physics faculty. At Harvard he earned the baccalaureate (1903), the master’s (1911), and the doctorate in physics (1915). Sabine taught at Worcester Academy (1903–1910), served as assistant in physics at Harvard (1915–1916), and was an assistant professor at Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland (1916–1918). In 1919 he became director of acoustical research at the Wallace Clement Sabine Laboratory of Acoustics, better known as the Riverbank Laboratory, in Geneva, Illinois. He remained there until his retirement in 1947, except for a period of war work at the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory (1942–1945). Sabine was a charter member of the Acoustical Society of America (1929), served as its fourth president (1935–1937), and was elected to honorary membership in 1954. After his retirement, while continuing to be active as a consultant, he turned his thoughts to the reconciliation of Christianity with the results of modern physical science and psychology. Sabine published his conclusions in Atoms. Men and God, his second book.

The bulk of Sabine’s scientific work followed directly from Wallace Sabine’s recognition of the reverberation time as the most significant variable affecting the acoustical quality of listening rooms and his subsequent discovery of the empirical relationship between reverberation time and total absorption. Total absorption was a summation of the sound-absorbing power of the various constituents of the room, a quantity that Wallace Sabine defined and showed how to measure. The Riverbank Laboratory was built for Wallace Sabine’s use in determining the sound-absorptive properties of architectural materials as well as the sound absorption and transmission characteristics of architectural elements and types of construction. Wallace Sabine died just as the Riverbank Laboratory was completed, and Paul Sabine was appointed to carry out the research program that would make it possible to design acoustical environments on a scientific basis. The results of this research were incorporated in his textbook on acoustical design. Acoustics and Architecture (1932).

Sabine was also active as an acoustical consultant to architects. He was consulted in the design of the Radio City Music Hall in New York and of the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia. He was most proud, however, of his work in the planning of the remodeling of the House and Senate Chambers of the United States Capitol Building after World War II. The acoustical design of the remodeled chambers was a notable success.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sabine’s books are Acoustics and Architecture (New York—London, 1932) and Atoms, Men and God (New York, 1953). His scientific papers may be located through the cumulative indexes of the Journal of theAcoustical Society of America and through the citations in Acoustics and Architecture. Several of his papers, as well as extensive sections of Acoustics and Architecture, offer retrospectives of the development of architectural acoustics as it grew from the work of Wallace Sabine.

Carlton Maley