Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam born 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.[2] Due to his unconventional working style, he is also popularly known as the People's President[3][4]. Before his term as India's president, he distinguished himself as engineering visionary and was awarded India's highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna in 1997 for his work with DRDO and his role as scientific advisor to the Indian government. He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on development of ballistic missile and space rocket technology[5]. In India he is considered a progressive mentor, innovator and visionary. Kalam played a pivotal organizational, 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 has received honorary doctorates from as many as thirty universities .[7] The Government of India has honoured him with the nation's highest civilian honours: the Padma Bhushan in 1981; Padma Vibhushan in 1990; and the Bharat Ratna in 1997.
Kalam is the Fourth President of India to have been honoured with a Bharat Ratna before being elected to the highest office, the other three being Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ,V. V. Giri and Zakir Hussain. He is also the first scientist and first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Kalam's probable views on certain issues have been espoused by him in his book India 2020 where he strongly advocates an action plan to develop India into a knowledge superpower and into a developed nation by the year 2020. Kalam is credited with the view that India ought to take a more assertive stance in international relations; he regards his work on India's nuclear weapons program as a way to assert India's place as a future superpower.
APJ Abdul Kalam was born in 1931 in a middle-class family in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, a town well-known...