c


c







 


 

Jump to: navigation, search

This article is about the former President of India. For the freedom fighter, see Abul Kalam
Azad.
c
 
  
c
 








July 25, 2002 ± July 25, 2007
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr. Manmohan




Singh


Bhairon Singh Shekhawat


K. R. Narayanan


Pratibha Patil

October 15, 1931 (age 78)[1]

! 

Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, India
 "#
Never married
c




Madras Institute of Technology
  
Aerospace Engineering
$% 
Islam

c
 
  
c
 

(Tamil: Î
  



Î
  ), born October 15, 1931, Tamil Nadu, India, usually referred to as ã
c



c
 
', was the eleventh President of India, serving from 2002 to 2007,[2] he was
elected during the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party, led ruling coalition, under prime minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee.[3] During his term as The President, he was popularly known as the
Ê
 Ê 
.[4][5]

Before his term as India's president, he worked as an aeronautical engineer with DRDO and
ISRO. He is popularly known as the  


 for his work on development of
ballistic missile and space rocket technology.[6] In India he is highly respected as a scientist and
as an engineer.

Kalam played a pivotal organisational, technical and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear
test in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.[7] He is a professor at Anna
University (Chennai) and adjunct/visiting faculty at many other academic and research
institutions across India.

With the death of R. Venkataraman on January 27, 2009, Kalam became the only surviving
former President of India.[2]

ß 

[hide]

i 1 Political views
i 2 Personal life
i 3 Kalam as an engineer
i 4 Honours
i 5 Books and documentaries
i 6 References
i 7 External links

&
  
'

APJ Abdul Kalam strongly advocates an action plan to develop India into a knowledge
superpower and into a developed nation by the year 2020 in his book 
 . Kalam is
credited with the view that India ought to take a more assertive stance in international relations;
he regards his work on India's nuclear weapons program as a way to assert India's place as a
future superpower.

Kalam continues to take an active interest in other developments in the field of science and
technology as well. He has proposed a research programme for developing bio-implants. He is a
supporter of Open source software over proprietary solutions and believes that the use of open
source software on a large scale will bring more people the benefits of information technology
[8]
.

Kalam's belief in the power of science to resolve society's problems and his views of these
problems as a result of inefficient distribution of resources is modernistic. He also sees science
and technology as ideology-free areas and emphasises the cultivation of scientific temper and
entrepreneurial drive. In this, he finds a lot of support among India's new business leaders like
the founders of Infosys and Wipro, (leading Indian IT corporations) who began their careers as
technology professionals much in the same way Kalam did.

&
  


Abdul Kalam's father was a devout Muslim, who 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 his biography that to support his studies, he
started his career as a newspaper vendor. This was also told in the book, c

 
 
 
  


c    by Vinita Krishna. The house Kalam was born
in can still be found on the Mosque street in Rameshwaram, and his brother's curio shop abuts it.
This has become a point-of-call for tourists who seek out the place. Kalam grew up in an
intimate relationship with nature, and he says in 

  that he never could imagine that
water could be so powerful a destroying force as that he witnessed when he was thirty three. That
was in 1964 when a cyclonic storm swept away the Pamban bridge and a trainload of passengers
with it and also Kalam's native village, Dhanushkodi.

He is a scholar of Thirukkural; in most of his speeches, he quotes at least one ! . Kalam has
written several inspirational books, most notably his autobiography 

  , aimed at
motivating Indian youth. Another of his books, " 

 
 

 Ê
 
#
reveals his spiritual side. He has written poems in Tamil as well. It has been reported that there is
considerable demand in South Korea for translated versions of books authored by him. [9].

Kalam has also patronised grassroots innovations. He is closely associated with the Honey Bee
Network and The National innovation Foundation. The NIF is a body of Government of India
and operates from Ahmadabad, Gujrat. He respects all religions, including Sikhism and
Hinduism.

He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller.[10]

&
 



%

After graduating in Science from St. Joseph's College in Tiruchi, Abdul Kalam graduated with a
diploma in the mid-1950s from Madras Institute of Technology specializing in Aeronautical
Engineering [11]. As the Project Director, he was heavily involved in the development of India's
first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III). As Chief Executive of Integrated Guided
Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), he also played a major part in developing many
missiles of India including Agni and Prithvi. Although the entire project has been criticised for
being overrun and mismanaged[12]. He was the Chief Scientific Adviser to Prime Minister and
Secretary, Department of Defence Research & Development from July 1992 to December 1999.
Pokhran-II nuclear tests were conducted during this period, led by him.
He is one of those scientists who aims at putting technology created by him to multiple use. He
used the light weight carbon-compound material designed for Agni to make callipers for the
polio affected. This carbon composite material reduced the weight of the calipers to 400 grams
(from its original weight of 4kgs.) Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS, Hyderabad)
was the birthplace for the defence technology spin offs from Kalam's labs via the DRDL
(Defence Research and Development Laboratory), DMRL (Defence Metallurgical Research Lab)
and the RCI (Research Centre Imarat). Addressing a conference at Athens, Greece, Kalam told
that "Seeing the children run with lighter callipers brought tears to the eyes of their parents. That
was the real moment of bliss for me".

&
(  

Abdul Kalam, the 11th President of India, is seen on the left talking with the top students of La
Martinière Lucknow. [13]

On Wednesday April 29, 2009, he became the first Asian to be bestowed the Hoover Medal,
America's top engineering prize, for his outstanding contribution to public service. On
September 15, 2009, he was a recipient of the International von Kármán Wings Award [14].
Kalam has received honorary doctorates from as many as thirty universities, including the
Carnegie Mellon University, University of Kentucky and the Nanyang Technological University
of Singapore.[15]

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 for his work
with ISRO and DRDO and his role as a scientific advisor to the Indian government..

Kalam is the Third President of India to have been honoured with a Bharat Ratna before being
elected to the highest office, the other two being Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Zakir Hussain.
He is also the first scientist and first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Kalam has been chosen to receive prestigious 2008 Hoover Medal for his outstanding public
service. The citation said that he is being recognised for making state-of-the-art healthcare
available to the common man at affordable prices, bringing quality medical care to rural areas by
establishing a link between doctors and technocrats, using spin-offs of defence technology to
create state-of-the-art medical equipment and launching tele-medicine projects connecting
remote rural-based hospitals to the super-specialty hospital. A pre eminent scientist, a gifted
engineer, and a true visionary, he is also a humble humanitarian in every sense of the word, it
added. [16]

After his tenure as the president he is now a visiting guest professor at JSS university,
Mysore.He agreed to deliver a minimum of four lectures every year.