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 Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

pastor Charles and Rebecca Likely née McClure. He was educated at

McKendree College McKendree University (McK) is a private university in Lebanon, Illinois. Founded in 1828 as the Lebanon Seminary, it is the oldest college or university in Illinois. McKendree enrolls approximately 2,300 undergraduates and nearly 700 graduate ...

(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 Wallace Clement Sabine (June 13, 1868 – January 10, 1919) was an American physicist who founded the field of architectural acoustics. Sabine was the architectural acoustician of Boston's Symphony Hall, widely considered one of the two or thre ...

(who died from cancer) as director of the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories (which later became a part of the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

). 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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

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.

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* Atoms, Men and God (1953) {{DEFAULTSORT:Sabine, Paul Earls 1879 births 1958 deaths Acoustical engineers McKendree University alumni Harvard University alumni Illinois Institute of Technology faculty