Publisher's Synopsis
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (15 October 1931 - 27 July 2015, Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India), also known as Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Father of Indian Missiles and Missile Man, was the Eleventh President of the Republic of India. He was famous as the former President of India, a renowned scientist and engineer.
He was born on 15 October 1931 in a middle class Muslim family in Dhanushkodi village (Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu). His father Jainulabdeen was neither highly educated nor wealthy. His father used to give boats on rent to fishermen. Abdul Kalam lived in a joint family. The number of members of the family can be estimated from the fact that he himself had five brothers and five sisters and there used to be three families in the house. His father had a great influence on Abdul Kalam's life. Even though he was not educated, but his passion and the values given by him were of great use to Abdul Kalam. At the age of five, he was initiated into the Panchayat Primary School of Rameswaram. His teacher Iyadurai Solomon had told him that 'to achieve success and favorable results in life, these three forces, intense desire, faith, expectation, should be well understood and establish dominance over them.' Abdul Kalam also did the work of distributing newspapers to continue his early education. Kalam graduated in Space Science from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1958. After graduation, he joined the Indian Defense Research and Development Institute to work on the hovercraft project. In 1962, he joined the Indian Space Research Organisation, where he successfully played a role in several satellite launch projects. As Project Director, he played an important role in the construction of India's first indigenous satellite launch vehicle SLV-3, which successfully launched the Rohini satellite into space in July 1980.
