Person · aerospace engineer & president · India
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Also known as A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, APJ Abdul Kalam, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, Missile Man
Rameswaram-born Tamil Muslim aerospace engineer (1931–2015) who worked at ISRO on the SLV-3 launcher that put Rohini into orbit in 1980, led the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme from 1983 that produced the Prithvi and Agni missiles, oversaw the Pokhran-II nuclear tests of May 1998 as scientific adviser to the Prime Minister, and served as India's eleventh president from 2002 to 2007. His popular writing — Wings of Fire (1999), Ignited Minds (2002) — placed him in the twenty-first century's small group of Indian scientists with mass public audiences. He died giving a lecture at IIM Shillong in 2015.
- Date
- 1931–2015
- Function
- Science & medicine
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He grew up fishing with his father on Pamban Island beside the Rameswaram temple; his vegetarianism and daily reading of the Gita and Quran together became the signature of his later public life. He was unmarried, lived in Rashtrapati Bhavan with his library of 2,500 books, and left all his papers to the Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Memorial at Rameswaram. The 2015 missile test was in part his twenty-fifth revisit to the Pokhran-II site.
About the place
Placed at Rameswaram (birthplace, tomb) and Delhi (presidency).
Connections (5)
- FromRāmeshvara / Rameswaram
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was born at Rameswaram on 15 October 1931 and grew up on Pamban Island beside the Ramanathaswamy temple. His father ferried pilgrims across the strait to the temple town; the daily call to prayer at the mosque and the Rama temple's puja were the soundtrack of his childhood, which he returned to in his memoir Wings of Fire. His tomb at Pei Karumbu, Rameswaram, draws steady visitors, and the Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Memorial opened there in 2017.
- Oversaw atPokhran
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam oversaw the Pokhran-II nuclear tests of 11 and 13 May 1998 as scientific adviser to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee — the five test devices that made India a declared nuclear-weapons state, after the 1974 Smiling Buddha test had opened the capability. Operation Shakti was conducted with such operational secrecy that American satellite surveillance missed the construction phase entirely; Kalam and the testers worked in groups of five, moved between sites in army uniform, and had the devices in position before the Americans realised what was happening.
- Worked atThumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS)
At the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, Abdul Kalam led the Satellite Launch Vehicle project through the 1970s. SLV-3 placed the 35-kg Rohini satellite in low Earth orbit on 18 July 1980 — India's first fully indigenous orbital launch and the technical basis of every ISRO vehicle since.
- Worked atSatish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam worked at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre as SLV-3 project director in 1980 when the launcher put Rohini into orbit on 18 July 1980, making India the sixth country to achieve independent satellite launch. Kalam's rise through ISRO from the SLV-3 project at Sriharikota through the Agni and Prithvi missile programmes to the 1998 Pokhran-II tests runs continuously through the SDSC facility.
- Worked atDRDO Bhawan, New Delhi
From DRDO Bhawan in New Delhi, Kalam led the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme from 1983 — Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag — and then served as the Government of India's Chief Scientific Adviser from 1992 until Pokhran II in May 1998. He stepped out of DRDO four years later to become the eleventh President of India.