Other Publications

Geometer Dreams by Peter Byrne

A review by Michael D. Breen, January 2023

In Geometer Dreams Peter Byrne showcases landmarks and trig points of a distin-guished forty year career as a geometer. He eschews the title ‘surveyor’. ‘Surveyors, having so much difficulty in defining themselves, should not be surprised that their profession, its wide scope, its importance, is not commonly understood’.

The author recognises that readers may be misled by their preconceptions of ‘surveyors’. Men with tripods on the pavement looking at other men with long white calibrated sticks. So Byrne uses the term Geometer whom he observes in the third person.

At the conclusion of the hundred vignettes the reader is so much the wiser even if a constraining definition remains elusive.

Peter Byrne is ‘old school’ in spirit and appreciation. Though he is happy to embrace and master new technology as it arrives. Nonetheless he is happy to val-ue rather than spurn the old such as a wheelbarrow or World War 1 heliograph, four cylinder Land Rover, The Curta Calculator or Tellurometers.

Like the cabinetmakers who mastered hand tools and moved to electric tops or the artist who mastered sketching before oil painting the author’s career saw small and large changes which reduced the arduous field labours and improved ac-curacy. Devices in the right hands of course.

The dreams move from cadet journeyman to master practitioner and busi-nessman to standard bearer for the profession and for professionalism with the In-stitution of Surveyors, federally and The International Federation of Surveyors. Then a turn into mediation and dispute resolution where he surveyed and un-earthed vectors and connections of people stuck in conflict and inaction.

So what is the spirit the elan vital the underlying driving force linking the ad-ventures, jobs, trips, challenges, appointments and leaps of this geometer? Leonardo, or was it Einstein, said that genius is mostly in observation. And our greatest preventer of observing or learning is what we know; what we believe to be the truth about the way things are. The Geometer is an ongoing lifelong learner. And you can feel his delight when he achieves a new learning. This requires courage, civil cour