John J. Nitti

John J. Nitti earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a professor of Spanish and Portuguese for more than fifteen years. His history with exploring Old Spanish lexicography led to major government funding from the U.S. and Spain, allowing him (along with his mentor, Lloyd Kasten) to devise innovative ways to bring computing to bear on the Old Spanish Dictionary project, which the Wisconsin Seminary of Medieval Spanish Studies had been at work on since the 1930s. In addition to his directorship of the Old Spanish Dictionary project (1975-2001), Nitti and Kasten founded the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (HSMS), initially to disseminate the large numbers of transcripts and other materials that the dictionary project was producing.