In a six-decade-long career, his advocacy of social reforms in corrections, education, and government services and pivotal role in establishing social research and behavioural science in various universities impacted on generations of Australians.

Part of his working life coincided with a period when many Australians embraced the idea of societal change.

And even when the climate changed, he remained a respected campaigner for social justice, chairing the Vinson Inquiry in 2001 that allowed parents, teachers and community members to challenge governments and the media about public education.

But like many reformers, Professor Vinson met strong opposition and was sometimes thrown under the bus by politicians.

His most famous defeat came in 1981.

Three years earlier, Premier Neville Wran had appointed him chairman of the NSW Corrective Services Commission after Justice John Nagles royal commission was scathingly critical of the jail system.

Labor lacked the stomach for prison reform; the media went ballistic on law and order.

After a series of articles in the press implying Professor Vinson was pandering to hardened criminals, Wran was quoted saying of prison reform: "I think we went ahead of public opinion." Professor Vinson resigned.

Educated at Marist Brothers Mosman, he took a BA and diploma in social work at the University of Sydney before entering the prison service.

His first job as a parole officer taught him a lesson in penology he never forgot: Professor Vinson recalled years later he had been "dumbfounded" when told to take a man who had served more than 20 years behind bars from Long Bay to Central and put him on a train to his family in the bush. His charge had forgotten how to buy things in a shop, let alone a train ticket and was terrified of traffic noise.

He quit after five years and eventually went to the University of NSW as a tutor, then a lecturer in the Department of Social Work.

Social work courses had specialised in training hospital case workers but in the late 60s, UNSW especially, started teaching community work that championed the cause of clients using the system rather than simply allowing the system to dictate how it could be used by clients.

"The rise of community work accorded perfectly with the new zeitgeist for social change," said Marie Coleman, appointed by the incoming Whitlam government to head the newly created Social Welfare Commission.

"But Tony's work in targeting resources and programs to the disadvantage was seminal for the time and went some way to make the delivery of services far more efficient."

Prior to corrections, Professor Vinson was foundation director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and after leaving the jails he headed the School of Social Work at UNSW.

In early 1986 Professor Vinson alleged in a report on judicial sentencing that a NSW District judge was lenient when dealing with clients of a particular solicitor.

Once again Professor Vinson was lambasted. Judge John Foord​ resigned later that year on medical grounds.

Professor Vinson kept holding a torch to Australia's underbelly.

His 2001 report, Dropping off the Edge, mapped the distribution of disadvantage in Australia. The most  comprehensive national study of its kind, in a boom economy, he found that just 1.7 per cent of postcodes and communities across Australia accounted for more than seven times their share of top rank positions on the major factors that cause intergenerational poverty.

His influence  was Australia-wide: Mildura, Victoria, named the Tony Vinson Centre for Community Development in his honour in 2008.