Abstract
This chapter provides the author's personal account of the foundation of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Study. It was written as a result of a request for a description of the background and events leading up to the establishment of "New Zealand's most famous longitudinal research project". The chapter describes the founder's professional background, why he began the research, background to the research design, the pilot study, selecting the sample, ethical aspects, measures, data collection, data coding and analysis, the first formal report "A Thousand Dunedin Three Year Olds", and reporting the important findings to the community.