The Bright and Shiny Soul of Geoffrey Brennan (1944-2022).

• Author: Munger, Michael C.

Almost a decade ago, Geoff Brennan and I published a remembrance and analysis of the work of Nobelist James M. Buchanan: ("The Soul of James Buchanan?," Brennan and Munger 2014). Buchanan's rule had always been, as we noted, that "titles should be felicitous." And given that our opening anecdote ("The Ash Wednesday Story") was gently teasing, we were pleased to be able to talk about Jim's soul, partly because Jim-the-atheist would have been a little miffed.

Geoff Brennan was not an atheist; in fact, he literally sang the praises of faith and worship when he got the chance, though he did not evangelize in his academic life. I hope that, in this context, my title in the present piece is likewise felicitous. Everything about Geoff Brennan was bright and shiny, and he made everyone around him smarter and happier.

Positions

Australia was not very wealthy in 1944, and it was the center of exactly nothing. Harold G. "Geoff" Brennan was better at everything than most of the people around him. He was good at math; he could dance and sing--appearing semiprofessionally in a variety of theater productions for years--and enjoyed telling stories and playing golf.

Graduating from the Australian National University with first honors in 1966, he considered his options. He took a "temporary" position teaching economics at the ANU in 1968, with only a B.Ec., and that association extended, with some gaps, for the next fifty years.

He could have finished a Ph.D. at several points earlier on, but he really did have a lot of talents, and a lot of different options. In a year that must have felt like "Aussie Lad Goes to the North Pole!," Geoff spent a year as a visiting research fellow in 1971-72 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But he surrendered to the inevitable in 1976 and filed a thesis entitled "Essays in the Theory of Public Goods and Income Distribution," under the supervision of Prof. John Head. But the "thesis" was simply papers Geoff had been working on anyway. He didn't quite just staple together three published pieces he had in a file drawer, but it was something along those lines.

Geoff taught in economics, and then philosophy at the ANU for the rest of his career, with two exceptions. The first is the remarkably productive period he spent at the Public Choice Center, first as a visitor (1976-1977) and then as a professor of economics (1978-1983) at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, with his final few months spent in Fairfax after the Center moved to George Mason University.

The second exception was Geoff's acceptance of an annual spring semester appointment as the general director of the joint UNC-Duke Philosophy, Politics, and...