Paul Earls Sabine (22 January 1879 – 28 December 1958) was an American acoustic engineer and a specialist on acoustic architecture. Sound absorbing boards made of porous gypsum was sometimes known by the tradename Sabinite. He was a director at the Riverbank Laboratories until his retirement in 1947.
Sabine was born in Albion, Illinois, to Methodist pastor Charles and Rebecca Likely née McClure. He was educated at McKendree College (1899) before going to Harvard University from where he received a doctorate in 1915. He taught physics for a while and in 1919 he replaced his cousin Wallace Clement Sabine (who died from cancer) as director of the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories (which later became a part of the Illinois Institute of Technology). He developed the work of his cousin and specialized in acoustic architecture and was a consultant for architects and involved in the design of the Radio City Music Hall, New York; Fels Planetarium, Philadelphia; and the House and Senate Chambers. He established relationships between total sound absorption, reverberation and the absorptive properties of materials while also innovating measurement, standards, and absorptive materials. A porous gypsum plaster to line walls and meant to absorb sounds was developed in 1924 by the Keasbey Mattison laboratories and marketed as Sabinite. During World War II he worked at the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory. After his retirement in 1947 he moved to Colorado Springs and spent a lot of time on Christianity and its relationship to science which he wrote about in Atoms, Men and God (1953). He published the landmark book Acoustics and Architecture (1932). His son Hale Johnson Sabine (1909-1981) also became an acoustics specialist.
References
- Harvard College. Class of 1903. 1913. pp. 439–440.
- Sabine., Paul E. (1920). "The Absorption of Sound by Rigid Walls". Physical Review. 16 (6): 514–518. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.16.514. ISSN 0031-899X.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1929). "The measurement of sound absorption coefficients". Journal of the Franklin Institute. 207 (3): 341–368. doi:10.1016/S0016-0032(29)91450-2.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1929). "The measurement of sound absorption coefficients". Journal of the Franklin Institute. 207 (3): 341–368. doi:10.1016/S0016-0032(29)91450-2.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1935). "What is Measured in Sound Absorption Measurements". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 6 (4): 239–245. doi:10.1121/1.1915742. ISSN 0001-4966.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1938). "Effects of Cylindrical Pillars in a Reverberation Chamber". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 10 (1): 1–5. doi:10.1121/1.1915949. ISSN 0001-4966.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1944). "The Problem of Industrial Noise". American Journal of Public Health and the Nation's Health. 34 (3): 265–270. doi:10.2105/AJPH.34.3.265. ISSN 0002-9572. PMC 1626184. PMID 18015962.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1922). "Diffraction Effects in Sound Absorption Measurements". Physical Review. 19 (4): 402. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.19.402. ISSN 0031-899X.
- Amber sound absorbing plaster. Keasbey & Mattison Co. 1930. p. 8.
- Moyer, David L. (2001). "Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 109 (5): 2328. doi:10.1121/1.4744170. ISSN 0001-4966.
- Sabine, Paul E. (1936). "The Beginnings of Architectural Acoustics". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 7 (4): 242–248. doi:10.1121/1.1915836. ISSN 0001-4966.
- "Paul E. Sabine". Physics Today. 12 (2): 60. 1959. doi:10.1063/1.3060694. ISSN 0031-9228.
External links
- Atoms, Men and God (1953)