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APJ Abdul Kalam Life History | prabhuraja | Indiainteracts.inWritten by : prabhuraja

Abul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (Tamil: ) born October 15, 1931, Tamil Nadu, India, usually referred as Dr. A.

P. J. Abdul Kalam^, was the eleventh President of India, serving from 2002 to 2007.[2] Due tohis unconventional working style, he is also popularly known as the People's President. Before

his term as India's president, he distinguished himself as engineering visionary and was awardedIndia's highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna in 1997 for his work with DRDO and his role as

scientific advisor to the Indian government. He loves children, and since leaving the presidency,he spends a lot of time with them. He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his

work and is considered a progressive mentor, innovator and visionary in India.Contents

* 1 Honours* 2 Personal life

* 3 Kalam as an engineer* 4 Books

* 5 References* 6 External links

Honours

He has received honorary doctorates from as many as thirty universities .[3] The Government of

India has honoured him with the nation's highest civilian honours: the Padma Bhushan in 1981;Padma Vibhushan in 1990; and the Bharat Ratna in 1997.

Kalam is the Fourth President of India to have been honoured with a Bharat Ratna before beingelected to the highest office, the other three being Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ,V. V. Giri andZakir Hussain. He is also the first scientist and first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Referred to as the "People's President", Kalam is often considered amongst India's greatest

president going by a winnnig poll conducted by news channel CNN-IBN for India's BestPresident.

Personal life

APJ Abdul Kalam was born in 1931 in a middle-class family in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, a

town well-known for its Hindu shrines. His mother tongue is Tamil. His father, a devoutMuslim, owned boats which he rented out to local fishermen and was a good friend of Hindu

religious leaders and the school teachers at Rameshwaram. APJ Abdul Kalam mentions in hisbiography that to support his studies, he started his career as a newspaper vendor. This was also

told in the book, A Boy and His Dream: Three Stories from the Childhood of Abdul Kalam byVinita Krishna. The house Kalam was born in can still be found on the Mosque street at

Rameswaram, abutting his brother's curio shop. This has become a point-of-call for tourists whoseek out the place. Kalam grew up in an intimate relationship with nature, and he says in Wings

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of Fire that he never could imagine that water could be so powerful a destroying force as that he

witnessed when he was six. That was in 1934 when a cyclonic storm swept away the Pambanbridge and a trainload of passengers with it and also Kalam's native village, Dhanushkodi.

Kalam as an engineer

Abdul Kalam graduated from Madras Institute of Technology majoring in Aeronautical

Engineering. As the Project Director, he made significant contributions to the development ofIndia's first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III). As Chief Executive of Integrated

Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), he also played major part in developingmany missiles of India including Agni and Prithvi. He was the Chief Scientific Adviser to

Defence Minister and Secretary, Department of Defence Research " Development from July1992 to December 1999. Pokhran-II nuclear tests were conducted during this period, led by

him.