James Goodnight Founder of SAS Institute
James Goodnight Founder of SAS Institute

Biography of James Goodnight

Early Life

James Goodnight founder of SAS institute is a famous American internet entrepreneur. He was born in the year of 1943 on January 6th in Salisbury, North Carolina in America. He was admitted in Montessori school for his initial education, when he was just five years of age. After his early education from a school, he was admitted in Imperial College for further studies. For his higher education he joined North Carolina State University and got his Bachelor’s degree in the year of 1964 in the field of computer science. In addition, he completed his MS in the same field from the same university in 1968.

Interest in Computer Science

He completed his education in field of computer science because he used to call it as his passion. One of his famous quotes about computes was that, “I can live without food, water and other life utilities but not without computers. This was just his interest in the field which made him a pioneer of the field and now he is one of the widely known internet businessmen of United States of America. This was the result of this interest which led him to become the Co founder of SAS institute.

Co Founder of SAS Institute

James Goodnight was a faculty member in North Carolina state university in those days, when university started a research project in 1960s. This research was intended to analyze the agricultural data to increase output of the crops after a shorter input. This data was to be analyzed from the United States department of agriculture. This research project was led by James Goodnight and his other two fellows named as Anthony James Barr and John Sall.

SAS Institute

SAS institute which was formerly a research project of three friends in North Caroline State University about agricultural data analysis was co founded by James goodnight, Anthony James Barr and John Sall. This project was funded by United State department of agriculture (USDA) by getting a grant through National institute of Health (NIH) at that time. NIH discontinued the project funding in the year of 1972 and as a result there was a fear of project shut down. In the year of 1976 this project had more than 100 customers, that’s why due to fund stoppage, the leaders of this project left the university to incorporate their own SAS institute. Later on SAS institute was promoted to software which is North Carolina Based analytics software. The SAS institute is one of the largest private software companies of the world and owns the largest market shares for the advanced analytics. Presently it has more than 50000 customer sites and 200 products.

Present Situation

Presently James Goodnight is almost 71 years of age and currently residing in United States of America. He is the CEO of the SAS institute for more than three decades and he is the main reason behind taking SAS institute to a multibillion dollar company.