A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was an Indian aerospace scientist and politician. He served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. He came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal role in India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.

About A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in brief

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace scientist and politician. He served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. He came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal role in India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974. Kalam was a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. He died from an apparent cardiac arrest in Shillong, India, on July 27, 2015, aged 83. He was buried with full state honours in his hometown of Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, where he was born and raised. His family had been wealthy traders and landowners, with numerous properties and large tracts of land. However, the family fortune and properties were lost over time, apart from the ancestral home. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation and Indian Space Research Organisation. In 1969, Kalam received the government’s approval to visit NASA’s space programme. In 1964, he visited more than 100 scientists and engineers to include more engineers to NASA’s Space Shuttle programme. He worked on India’s first satellite launch vehicle, Rohini, which successfully deployed the Rohini in July 1980 near-earth orbit.

He returned to his civilian life of education, writing and public service after a single term. He is survived by his wife, three children and a step-son. He had a son and a daughter, both of whom are now in their thirties, and a son-in-law, who is also a politician and a former Prime Minister of India. He has a grandson and a grandson who are both serving members of the Indian National Congress. His great-grandson is former Indian Prime Minister Naveen Patnaik, who was elected to the Lok Sabha on a pro-poor ticket in 2008. He will be buried in Rameswaram, his hometown. He left behind a wife and three children, all of whom have gone on to successful careers in business and politics. He lived in Madras, India with his wife and two children, and was a member of the Madras Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science and Technology, among many other institutions. In his last years, he lived in a retirement home in Chennai. He wrote a book about his experiences as a space scientist and a memoir about his time in the Indian Air Force (IAF) He was also a member and author of several books on space exploration and space policy. His son, Ravi Kalam, is a well-known author, including a number of books on the history of space exploration. His grandson, Ravishankar, is the author of a book on the Indian space programme, The Mission to the Moon.

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