Dr. James Goodnight

phomore 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. 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. He is still active in developing products for the company he runs. SAS Institute, which puts a quarter of its profits into research & development, develops business intelligence software.