Prof Poulton, 61, was remembered yesterday as a world-leading behavioural scientist, a rigorous, impressive thinker and a profoundly compassionate man.
Friend Prof Stephen Robertson, acting as a spokesman for Prof Poulton’s wife Dr Sandhya Ramrakha and daughter Priyanka, said Prof Poulton was diagnosed with cancer about three years ago and underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.
He died peacefully on Friday evening at Dunedin Hospital with family and friends at his side.
"The guy had not just warmth, not just this amazing sense of responsibility and this towering intellect — he also was a hell of a lot of fun," Prof Robertson said.
"He was larger than life. He just was enormous, positive fun."
Prof Poulton did not initiate the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, better known as the Dunedin Study, which began in 1972, however, he became deputy director in 1995, before replacing its founder, Dr Phil Silva, as director in 2000. When he did, he took it to a new level.
"He took it to a level which actually defined elements of human development and human behaviour, which informed policy, changed law, changed the way that we should think about human development and flourishing."
Based at the University of Otago, the Dunedin Study follows the lives of more than 1000 people born between April 1, 1972, and March 31, 1973.
The amount of data produced is unparalleled and its influence has been global.
University of Otago acting vice-chancellor Prof Helen Nicholson yesterday acknowledged Prof Poulton’s leadership and immense dedication to the study, "the results of which have contributed to science internationally and the betterment of life for not only New Zealanders but people all over the world".
The debt Prof Poulton felt to the study’s participants led him to write a personal letter to all over the past week so they would be the first to know that his health had forced him to step down as director.
Now, another letter had been sent from the study team to acknowledge his death, she said.
Former New Zealand chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman said he lost a close friend and collaborator and New Zealand lost an "intellectual giant" who had a profound impact on the field of social sciences.
An obituary will follow.
