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John Sall
Born1948 (age 75–76)
Rockford, Illinois, US
Occupation(s)Co-founder and executive vice president, SAS Institute
Children4
WebsiteJohn Sall's blog

John P. Sall (born 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and computer software developer, who co-founded SAS Institute and created the JMP statistical software.

Sall grew up in Rockford, Illinois and earned degrees in history, economics and statistics. In 1976, he joined others from North Carolina State University in co-founding SAS Institute, an analytics software company. In the 1980s, Sall and other developers created the JMP statistical software.

Early life and education

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John Sall was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1948.[1] As a child, he developed an interest in science.[2]

He received a bachelor's degree in history from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Sall felt he graduated into a weak job market, so he went to graduate school at Northern Illinois University, where he earned a master's degree in economics. It was at graduate school that Sall became interested in statistics and computer science.[3] He went on to study graduate-level statistics at North Carolina State University, where he received an honorary doctorate in 2003.[4][5][6] He received an honorary doctorate from NIU in 2014.[7]

Career

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Main articles: SAS Institute and SAS (software)

James Goodnight was John Sall's mentor at North Carolina State University.[8][9][1] In 1976, the two joined others from the University, Anthony James Barr and Jane Helwig, in founding SAS Institute, an analytics software company founded to analyze agricultural data.[8][5] Sall designed, developed, and documented many of the earliest procedures of the SAS language.[5] Some of his contributions included procedures for working with time series, econometrics, categorical data and matrix algebraic manipulations.[10]

JMP

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Main article: JMP (statistical software)

Sall started developing JMP, which originally stood for "John's Macintosh Project", in the 1980s, when the graphical user interface was introduced on the Macintosh.[1][9] Sall and a small team of developers spent a year and a half working on JMP before version one was released in October 1989.[11] Sall continued to do coding and product development for JMP software for more than 20 years, supporting Windows 3.1, writing the product in different implementation languages, re-writing the product's "nervous system" and improving the JMP scripting language.[11] Today Sall still acts as JMP's chief architect.[1]

He also co-authored the book JMP Start Statistics with Ann Lehman and Lee Creighton.[12]

Personal life

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Sall lives in Cary, North Carolina. He is married and has four children.[8] Sall and his wife are involved in conservation, international health and development, and environmental issues through the Sall Family Foundation.[13] Sall was on the board of The Nature Conservancy from 2002 to 2011,[5] and is a member of the board for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.[14] Sall and his wife also work with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), CARE, Pan American Health Organization, and other non-profits.[3][7] They contributed to the founding of Cary Academy, an independent college preparatory school for students grades six through 12.[4][5]

Sall was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015,[15] he is also a member of the North Carolina State University board of trustees. In 1994, he served as chairman of the Interface Foundation of North America.[16] He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from North Carolina State University's College of Sciences in 2017.[17]

Sall owns about one-third of SAS Institute, while Goodnight owns the remainder.[8]  According to Forbes, Sall's net worth was approximately $4.2 billion as of 2016, making him the 392nd richest person in the United States at the time.[14] As of 2009, most of Sall's net worth was illiquid, and based on the estimated worth of his partial ownership in SAS Institute. In 2018,[18] Sall was still working, doing programming, and leading a team of developers.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Lai, Eric (September 18, 2009). "Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on Coding". Computerworld. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  2. ^ Vellanki, Bhamini (2020-07-27). "Leadership Profile: John P. Sall, Founder of SAS Institute". The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  3. ^ a b Ohri, Ajay (July 28, 2000). "Interview John Sall Founder JMP/SAS Institute". DecisionStats. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  4. ^ a b "John Sall profile". North Carolina State University Board of Trustees. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  5. ^ a b c d e "John Sall Biography". Northern Illinois University. 2010. Archived from the original on December 5, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  6. ^ "Official SAS Biography". SAS Institute. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  7. ^ a b "NIU Today - Co-founder of SAS Institute to receive honorary NIU doctorate". NIU Today. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  8. ^ a b c d "Forbes profile". Forbes. September 20, 2007. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  9. ^ a b "Official JMP biography". JMP. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  10. ^ Agresti, Alan; Meng, Xiao-Li (2012-11-02). Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U. S. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-4614-3649-2.
  11. ^ a b Sall, John (October 5, 2009). "JMP Is 20 Years Old". SAS Blogs.
  12. ^ Sall, John; Creighton, Lee; Lehman, Ann (2007). JMP Start Statistics: A Guide to Statistics and Data Analysis Using JMP. SAS Press. ISBN 978-1599945729.
  13. ^ Monday (May 3, 1962). "John Sall - Tech Philanthropists - Donors - Foundations". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved May 10, 2016.
  14. ^ a b "Forbes profile: John Sall". Forbes. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  15. ^ "People News for January | Amstat News". 2015-01-01. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  16. ^ "Businessweek profile". Businessweek. Retrieved December 15, 2011.[dead link]
  17. ^ "2017 Distinguished Alumnus Award: John Sall". College of Sciences. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  18. ^ Sall, John (15 March 2018). "Presentation at Discovery Summit". JMP.com. JMP.com. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
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