James Goodnight

CEO of SAS Institute, Goodnight co-founded the company and has remained active in developing its products. SAS Institute puts a quarter of its profits into research & development and develops business intelligence software.

A few years later, while working on his master's, his curiosity was piqued over the prospect of man being sent to the moon. His programming skills helped him land a position with a company building electronic equipment for the ground stations that would communicate with the Apollo space capsules. Goodnight met his wife, Ann, while he was a senior at NC State and she was attending Meredith College.

sophomore year. "In mid-stream, a light went on, and I fell in love, making machines which do things for other people," he says. The following summer he got a job writing programs for the agricultural economics department. The intrigue never waned.