A.P.J ABDUL KALAM

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam born on October 15, 1931, Tamil Nadu, India, usually referred to as Dr. A. P. J.

 Abdul Kalam was the eleventh President of India, serving from 2002 to 2007 he was elected during the tenure of the National Democratic Alliance (India) coalition government, under prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee During his term as President, he was popularly known as the People's President.

Before his term as India's president, he worked as an aeronautical engineer with DRDO and ISRO. He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on development of ballistic missile and space rocket technology 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. 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

Political views

in his book India 2020 APJ Abdul Kalam strongly advocates an action plan to develop India into a knowledge superpower and into a developed nation by the year 2020. 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

As an aerospace engineer

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 . 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 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.

As Chairman, Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), he generated the Technology Vision 2020 documents – a road map for transforming India from Developing India to Developed India. He provided overall guidance to a number of Homegrown Technology Projects and major technology missions such as Sugar, Advanced Composites and Fly Ash utilization.

Dr. Kalam has served as the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister, from November 1999 to November 2001. He was primarily responsible for evolving policies, strategies and missions for generation of innovations and support systems for multiple applications. Also, generating science and technology task in strategic, economic and social sectors in partnership with Government departments, institutions and industry. Dr. Kalam was also the Chairman, Ex-officio, of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAC-C).
As a Professor:
Dr. Kalam took up academic pursuit as Professor, Technology & Societal Transformation at Anna University, Chennai and involved in teaching and research tasks. Above all he is on his mission to ignite the young minds for national development by meeting high school students across the country.

Honours

On September 15, 2009, he was a recipient of the International von Kármán Wings Award On Wednesday April 29, 2009, he became the first Asian to be bestowed the 2008 Hoover Medal, America's top engineering prize, for his outstanding contribution to 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.

The Government of India has honoured him with the nation's highest civilian honours: the Padma Bhushan in 1981; Padma Vibhushan in 1990; and theBharat 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.

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.