Busa visits Thomas Institute

During an informal meeting father Busa explained how he came to develop an Index Thomisticus. When writing his thesis on praesentia with Thomas Aquinas during the first years of World War II, he realized that there was a need for an index. When he visited the United States some years later, he had a meeting with some people from IBM, who had just opened an office in Milan. At first the people from IBM thought it would be impossible to make such an index for all the works of Thomas Aquinas, but Busa insisted, pointing out that it was their own motto that "the difficult would take them a day, the impossible would only take a little bit longer".

At this time the Index Thomisticus is one of the most important means for doing research in Aquinas. The almost 50 volumes are available now on one CD-ROM, with a nice search facility built into it. At the time a second edition is being prepared.