A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - Missile Man Of India

There are lot of peoples around us who inspire us everyday.Today we have a quick flashback of an inspirable person Mr."A.P.J.Abdul Kalam" missile man of india,11th president of india and have much more titles.

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on 15 october 1931 at Rameswaeram (Tamilnadu) in a poor family.His father Jainulabdeen, a boat owner and Ashiamma, a housewife.After completing school,he distributed newspapers to financially contribute to his father's income during schooling.

"When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust. Withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad"

         -Quote by Kalam.  

After completing his school education at the Ramanathapuram,he went to attend Saint Joseph's College, affiliated with the University of Madras, from where he graduated in physics in 1954. He then moved to Madras in 1955 to study aerospace engineering.

While he was working on a senior class project, the Dean was dissatisfied with the lack of progress and threatened revoking his scholarship unless the project was finished within the next three days. He worked tirelessly on his project and met the deadline, impressing the Dean who later said, "I  was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline". He narrowly missed achieving his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, as he placed ninth in qualifiers, and only eight positions were available in the IAF.

"The trouble with Indians [was] not that they

lacked educational opportunities or industrial
infrastructure - the trouble was in their
failure to discriminate between disciplines
and to rationalise their choices,"

a lesson that young Kalam learned from Professor Sponder, an Austrian aeronautical engineer who taught him at the Madras Institute of Technology. It was sponder who, as it were,dedicated him to a life in Aeronautical Engineering.He is own well meaning advice to all novitiate engineering students is "that when they choose their specialisation, the essential point to consider is whether the choice articulates their inner feelings and aspirations." 

After graduating from Madras Institute of Technology (MIT – Chennai) in 1960, he joined Aeronautical Development Establishment of Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) as a scientist.He started his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army.

 In 1969,he was transferred to the ISRO where he was the project director of India's first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near earth's orbit in July 1980.

He first started work on an expandable rocket project independently at DRDO in 1965.In 1963–64, he visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Wallops Flight Facility at Eastern Shore of Virginia.

During the period between the 1970s and 1990s,he made an effort to develop the Polar SLV and SLV-III projects, both of which proved to be success.

He played a major part in developing many missiles under the mission including "Agni", an intermediate range ballistic missile and "Prithvi", the tactical surface-to-surface missile.

In 1998, along with cardiologist Dr.Soma Raju,he developed a low cost Coronary stent. It was named as "Kalam-Raju Stent" honouring them.In 2012, the duo, designed a rugged tablet PC for health care in rural areas, which was named as "Kalam-Raju Tablet".

Sir Kalam served as the 11th President of India and served from 25 July 2002 to 25 July 2007.He got many awards Bharat Ratna,Padma Vibhushan,Padma Bhushan,etc in india and as well as other countries famous awards.

He is also a great writer and poet,he wrote many famous books and poems.

He progressed in sure and steady steps through childhood, among loving family members who sacrificed readily for him, through scholarship with devoted and inspirational teachers (Rameswaram Elementary School; Schwartz High School, Ramanathapuram; St. Joseph's College, Trichy; Madras Institute of Technology,Madras), into his first foray into professional life.

 "Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity".