Professor Peter Byrne 1946 - 2015

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Professor Peter Byrne

We are deeply saddened to announce the sudden death of Peter Byrne, Professor of Real Estate Dynamics and Head of the School of Real Estate & Planning, Henley Business School at the University of Reading.

Having graduate with a degree in Geography from the University of Manchester in 1968, Peter started his career with the College of Estate Management in Kensington and moved with them to Reading.

When the University took over the full time courses from the College and founded the Department of Land Management & Development, Peter moved to the University and has been with us ever since. Taking on a wide variety of roles and responsibilities he saw us progress from the Department of Land Management & Development in the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies, through several iterations to the School of Real Estate & Planning embedded within the Henley Business School.

Peter has been a constant mentoring presence throughout the academic development of real estate as a discipline and an inspiration to generations of researcher/academics.  He joined the University when the discipline was in its infancy and when the number of PhDs in real estate could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  Peter mentored many of today's leading academics and industry researchers through their formative years, as colleague, lecturer and particularly as PhD supervisor. He played a leading role in underpinning the huge strides that have been made over the lifetime of his career in analysing and understanding real estate markets.  He played a major role in bringing more rigorous quantitative methods to the analysis of real estate and his work on risk analysis of development was pioneering at the time.

Peter will be fondly remembered by the thousands of students who have been taught and supported by him over the last 45 years many of whom have gone on to influential and senior positions in the property industry both in the UK and internationally.

He will be sorely missed by real estate academic and practitioner community around the world.

Sir David Bell, Vice-Chancellor said, "Peter was an outstanding servant to the University of Reading for over 40 years. Literally thousands of students will have benefitted from his deep knowledge and wise counsel. Popular and well-known across the University, he will be sadly missed by colleagues. Our thoughts are with Peter's wife, Carol, at this desperately sad time."

We recently came across a reference written for Peter in 1968 which states that "Mr Byrne's character is one of the utmost integrity he is an honest, hardworking and intelligent young man with wide ranging interests. His outlook on life and one's duty to the world are most sincere and I am sure than he will make a success of his chosen field"...He did.