Pete was a founder member of Ed Kibblewhite's APM group from 1979 to 1990, working closely with the hardware guru Mick Bridgeland. The work that Mick and Pete did in the early days of the APM was at the forefront of astronomical research and paved the way for much of the groundbreaking discoveries that astronomy thrives on.

My own first encounter with Pete was just before Christmas 1979 when I turned up at the IoA for a job interview for work on the APM project. Standard APM interview practice in those days was to retreat to the pub and assess the finer points of the candidate's glassmanship. This turned out to be the first of many such events interspersed with stunning progress in a whole new area of astronomy. It was great fun and Pete was at the heart of it. Never one to suffer fools gladly, you soon figured out there was no hiding place where Pete was concerned. His sense of humour and penetrating insights were always spot on and he brought such a wide range of experience to bear on a whole host of new problems that has been greatly missed.

After then joining the RGO in 1990, Pete jumped at the chance to take his family on a 3 year tour of duty on La Palma. Pete and Jennifer made lots of friends there and Pete always took great delight in giving the observatory a hard time by constantly pushing for improvements in instrument performance.

Arriving back in the UK, Pete worked in the RGO computer support group, and when the RGO closed, moved back to a job at the IoA helping to manage the computing facilities. Fortunately we enticed him back to come and work on the VISTA and Gaia projects, where he rapidly became indispensable to their success.

He did this in his usual forthright style and dealt with all the myriad issues and problems that cropped up. Sadly, Pete never managed to see VISTA in action on Paranal, but his tenacious adherence to correct procedures and insistence on doing things properly was crucial in getting it to work correctly.

Pete was an astronomer, computer scientist and engineer all rolled into one. That was a rare combination then and is even more so these days. His wide range of experience, technical ability and his rigorous way of getting to grips with problems were highly valued, as was his tenacious adherence to correct procedures — apart possibly from his unique driving style.

We received many wonderful messages from around the world from people who knew Pete. They all emphasised his great sense of humour and ability to see the funny side of any situation, the fact that he was such a great character to work with, full of infectious enthusiasm, a keen sense of the absurd, and no matter how bad the situation, how it was always great fun to work with him.

Jim Lewis, a close friend and colleague of Pete who shared an office with him for many years, often quoted his best piece of advice from some ancient crisis: "Jim, you've got to laugh because if you don't you'll cry."

This was Pete. Laughter, and his ability to lighten a situation with it, was one of his greatest gifts, and it is this that I think we have missed the most.

— Mike Irwin