His study of the Florentine and Pistoiese Catasto of 1427 is one of the first statistical surveys to use computers to analyze large amounts of data.
The resulting book examines statistical patterns in tax-collecting surveys to find indications of social trends.
He was a member of the school debating team and met his wife-to-be Patricia McGahey at a match as a sophomore.
He went on to undertake a fellowship at Yale, where he worked on the Middle Ages in Italy with Robert Lopez, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1956.
[4][3] He had his first son, Maurice, before bringing his young family to Pisa for a year between 1954 and 1955 (courtesy of the Fulbright Program).