Alison Wendy Boulter was a dental surgeon from Woking, Surrey. She was born Alison Wendy Patten on 6 February 1965, the daughter of Michael David Patten and Patricia M Patten née Nichols. She studied dentistry at the University of Newcastle and qualified with a BDS in 1988. She became a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1991. She held posts at the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s department of dental sciences, at the virus reference division of the Central Public Health Laboratory, London and the department of oral medicine and pathology at King’s College school of medicine and dentistry. She went on to work at a child and family health centre in Woking, Surrey. She wrote papers on HIV and the Epstein-Barr virus, including ‘Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) associated lesions of the head and neck’ (July 1996 *Oral Diseases* 2[2]:117-24) and ‘Risk factors associated with Epstein-Barr virus replication in oral epithelial cells of HIV-infected individuals’ (September 1996 *AIDS* 10[9]:935-40). She married Joel L Boulter in 1990. Boulter died on 24 February 2013. She was 48.