Paul (Marvin) Rudolph

(b Elkton, KY, 28 Oct 1918; d New York, 8 Aug 1997). American architect. He studied architecture at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn (1935-40), and at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, under Walter Gropius (1939-43; 1946-7). He practised in a partnership with Ralph Twitchell in Sarasota, FL, from 1948 to 1952 and continued to build in Florida under his own name until the end of the 1950s. He first attracted national attention with a series of small houses that were in the functional style of his Harvard training but modified in detailing for the warm local climate and the post-war availability of new building techniques. The best known of these are the Healy Guest House (1948) and the Wheelan House (1951), both Siesta Key, near Sarasota (with Twitchell). The latter has a low-cost suspension roof of flat steel bars and external outriggers. Larger commissions from this period included the Mary Jewett Arts Center (1955-8), Wellesley College, MA, and the Sarasota High School (1958-9); the last has a free-standing concrete sun-breaker in front of it, reminiscent of Le Corbusier's work at Chandigarh, but with a composition of more regular rectangular openings.

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Rudolph, Paul (1858-1935), German mathematician and lens designer who joined Carl Zeiss, Jena, in 1886 and played a leading role, with Ernst Abbe, in the firm's diversification into photographic lenses. Among the classic optics he designed were the first Anastigmat (1890; later renamed the Protar), the Planar (1896), and the relatively small, light, and cheap four-element Tessar (1902). He retired from Zeiss in 1911, but continued to do optical research in the First World War for the military.

— Robin Lenman