Wallace Clement Sabine (1868-1919), American physicist and founder of architectural acoustics. In 1895 he was enlisted to improve the poor acoustics in a new lecture theatre at Harvard. Little was then known about such problems, but he saw that they must arise from the size, shape, and materials of a room. He conducted a number of experiments in the room using various arrangements of cushions, and was hence able to advise on some remedial measures. He later drew up a mathematical formula for a room's reverberation time in terms of measurable parameters. From 1904 he was much in demand to advise on architectural acoustics, and his methods have been in use ever since.