From Stephen Read
I remember when Peter joined the Department of Logic and Metaphysics (as it then was) in 1978. We had lost four staff through retirement and resignation over the previous couple of years, and that year Crispin Wright was appointed to the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics and Peter to a Temporary Lectureship (which was made permanent a year later).
Peter had recently held a Mellon Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I recall him telling of an occasion when he had waited at a freezing bus stop in Pittsburgh for some minutes in inadequate British winter clothing, only to faint as soon as he entered the warm bus. Undeterred, it later became a familiar sight to see him striding jacketless around chilly St Andrews.
Before CMU Peter had completed his PhD at LSE in London in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. Having lost not only staff but also students during the late ‘70s, we were keen to find more students, and it was Peter’s idea to introduce Joint Honours degrees in the Science Faculty here. But when we proposed Joint Honours in Logic and Scientific Method at the Board of Studies, there was a hostile reaction from many scientists at the suggestion that we should lecture their students on scientific method. We had to withdraw the original proposal and come back a year later with the degrees and courses in Logic and Philosophy of Science.
A later fond memory is of Peter joined with George Boolos at the Joint Session of the Mind Association and Aristotelian Society annual meeting in Birmingham in 1993. The session was chaired by Michael Dummett. But discussion became so heated between Boolos and Dummett that it soon became a fight between them chaired by Peter, who had to physically intervene to keep them apart.
Peter was a great friend and colleague to have, always generous with his time, a wonderful encouragement to students and always supportive of those around him.