About The Legend
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1931 Born in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu.
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1954 Graduated in Physics from University of Madras.
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1960 Graduated in Aerospace Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology.
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1961 Joined DRDO as a scientist.
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1969 Joined Space Research at ISRO.
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1980 Became the project Director for India's First Indegenous Satellite Program.
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1980 Was involved in the development of several Indegenous Missiles for India like Agni, Prithvi.
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1981 Awarded Padma Bhushan.
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1990 Awarded Padma Vibhushan.
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1992 Chief Advisor for the India's Nuclear Program.
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1997 Awarded Bharat Ratna.
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2002 Became 11th President of India.
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2015 The People's President passes away while doing what he loved the most, addressing students.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, in full
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam,
was born on October 15, 1931, in
Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India.
He served as the 11th President
of India from 2002 to 2007.
Kalam earned a degree in
aeronautical engineering from the
Madras Institute of Technology and in
1958 joined the Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO).
In 1969, he moved to the Indian
Space Research Organisation, where he
was project director of the SLV-III, the
first satellite launch vehicle that was
both designed and produced in India.
Rejoining DRDO in 1982,
Kalam planned the program that produced
a number of successful missiles, which
helped earn him the nickname
“Missile Man.”
Among those successes
was Agni, India’s first intermediate-range
ballistic missile, which incorporated
aspects of the SLV-III and was launched
in 1989.
He also played a
pivotal organisational, technical,
and political role in India's Pokhran-II
nuclear tests in 1998, the first since
the original nuclear test by India in 1974.
From 1992 to 1997 Kalam
was scientific adviser to the defense
minister, and he later served as principal
scientific adviser (1999–2001) to the
government with the rank of cabinet minister.
His prominent role in
the country’s 1998 nuclear weapons tests
solidified India as a nuclear power and
established Kalam as a national hero,
although the tests caused great concern
in the international community.
In 1998 Kalam put
forward a countrywide plan called
Technology Vision 2020, which he described
as a road map for transforming India from
a less-developed to a developed society
in 20 years. The plan called for, among
other measures, increasing agricultural
productivity, emphasizing technology as
a vehicle for economic growth, and
widening access to health care and
education.
While delivering a
lecture at the Indian Institute of
Management Shillong, Kalam collapsed and
died from an apparent cardiac arrest on
27 July 2015, aged 83.
Wheeler Island, a
national missile test site in Odisha, was
renamed Kalam Island in September
2015.
A prominent road in
New Delhi was renamed from Aurangzeb
Road to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road
in August 2015.
In February 2018,
scientists from the Botanical Survey
of India named a newly found plant
species as Drypetes kalamii, in his
honour.