2 WALLACE CLEMENT WARE SABINE— HALL tMEMOIRS [ v A L. I xxi L ) 



telephone, under Professor Cross, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later 

 became highly skilled as a painter of miniature portraits, while the son found his chief distinc- 

 tion in a field of exact science closely related to esthetic art. 



As a child Wallace was allowed to develop without forcing, but such was the natural vigor 

 of his mind that he gained the degree of A. B. at Ohio State University at the age of 18. He 

 is said not to have specialized in his college studies, but he had in Prof. T. C. Mendenhall an 

 inspiring teacher of physics, and his early interest in scientific matters is shown by the fact that 

 he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in 

 Philadelphia in 1884, when he was 16 years old. On leaving Ohio State University in 1886 

 he went to Harvard as a graduate student in mathematics and physics, and he received the 

 Harvard A. M. in 1888. From 1887 to 1889 he held a Morgan fellowship, but in the latter 

 year he became an assistant in physics. Rather early in his Harvard residence he was taken 

 by Professor Trowbridge as partner in a photographic study of the oscillating electric discharge, 

 and he showed a remarkable aptitude for work of this kind, requiring high experimental skill, 

 yet he never became a candidate for the Ph. D. Absorption in the work of teaching prevented 

 him for several years from engaging deeply in further work of research. He spent his energy 

 and his talents in building up courses of laboratory work, designing and making apparatus for 

 instruction, and in every way practicing with devotion the profession of a teacher. It is not 

 too much to say that, for the 15 years preceding his taking the duties of a deanship, he was 

 the most effective member of the Harvard department of physics in giving inspiration and 

 guidance to individual students of promise. This was due in part to his comparative youth, 

 though no one of the department was repellently old ; in part to his sympathetic willingness to 

 give help and to spend much time in giving help, though others were not lacking in this quality. 

 It was perhaps due mainly to the fact that, while he was no more deeply versed than others in 

 the profundities of physics and mathematics, he had a peculiarly clear vision for the right kind 

 of experimental problem and for the best way of attacking it, and his students instinctively, 

 it may be, perceived this. 



For a long time he seemed to be content to remain m comparative obscurity, while direct- 

 in° r others into paths of conspicuous achievement. He was made assistant professor of physics 

 in 1S95, after six years of teaching, in which he published little or nothing descriptive of re- 

 search. This was partly because he had a most severe standard for what a research paper 

 should be ; it should describe some piece of work so well done that no one would ever have to 

 investigate this particular matter again. To this standard he held true, with the result that 

 his published papers were, to the end, remarkably few and remarkably significant. 



One might have expected him, when he found time for research, to take up some problem 

 in fight, for that had seemed to be his chief field of interest; but accident, and a sense of duty, 

 turned him to a different quarter. The Fogg Art Museum, on its completion in 1895, proved 

 to have an auditorium 3 that was monumental in its acoustic badness, and President Eliot, 

 not fully realizing the importance of the step he was taking, but acting with his usual sure 

 judgment of men, called upon Sabine to find a remedy, as a practical service to the university. 

 The nature of Sabine's problem and the way he analyzed it can best be shown by the following 

 passages taken from the first 4 of his " Collected papers on acoustics": 



No one can appreciate the condition of architectural acoustics — the science of sound as applied to build- 

 ings — w ho has not with a pressing case in hand sought through the scattered literature for some safe guidance. 

 Responsibility in a large and irretrievable expenditure of money compels a careful consideration, and emphasizes 

 the meagreness and inconsistency of the current suggestions. Thus the most definite and often repeated state- 

 ments are such as the following, that the dimensions of a room should be in the ratio 2:3:5, or according to 



» The architect of this building was Richard Morris Hunt, one of the most eminent in America of his generation. The following story is told 

 of a conversation between him and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher: 



Mr. Beecher. Mr. Hunt, how much do you know about acoustics? 



Mr. Hunt. As much as anyone, Mr. Beecher. 



Mr. Beecher. How much is that? 



Mr. Hunt. Not a damned thing. 



Mr. Beecher. I think you are right. 



' Published first in the American Architect and the Engineering Record, 1900. 



