Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam 15 (October 1931 to July 27, 2015) was an Indian aviation scientist and politician. From 2002 to 2007, he served as the 11th President of India.

Born and brought up in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, he studied physics and engineering in aerospace. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, primarily with the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and was closely involved in India's civilian space program and military missile development efforts. Hence he came to be known as India's Missile Man for his research on ballistic missile production and vehicle launch technology. He also played a pivotal bureaucratic, scientific, and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since India's initial 1974 nuclear test. Kalam was elected as India's 11th President in 2002 with the help of both the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress. Widely known as the "People 's President," after a single term, he returned to his civilian life of education, writing, and public service. He has received many prestigious distinctions, including the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civil honor. Kalam collapsed while lecturing at the Shillong Indian Management Institute and died of an apparent cardiac arrest. He died at the age of 83. Thousands of people attended the funeral, including state dignitaries. The ceremony was held in his hometown of Rameswaram, where he was buried.

Early life and studying

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on October 15, 1931, to a Muslim Tamil family in the Rameswaram Pilgrimage Center on Pamban Island, then in the Madras presidency and now in the Tamil Nadu State. His father, Jainulabdeen, was a local mosque boat owner and imam; his mother, Ashiamma, was a wife of the house. His father owned a ferry from Rameswaram to the now uninhabited Dhanushkodi which took Hindu pilgrims back and forth. Kalam was the youngest of his family's four brothers and one sister. His ancestors were prosperous merchants and landlords, with various properties and large tracts of land.

We had exchanged grocery stores between the mainland and the island and from and to Sri Lanka, as well as ferrying pilgrims between the mainland and Pamban. As a result, the family gained the nickname of "Mara Kalam Iyakkivar" (wooden boat steerers), which was shortened to "Marker" over the years. But, with the opening of the Pamban Bridge to the mainland in 1914, the businesses collapsed and, apart from the ancestral home, family fortune and property were lost in time. Kalam 's family had become poor during his early childhood; he sold newspapers at an early age in order to increase his family's income.

A career as a research scientist

After graduating from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1960, Kalam joined the Defense Research and Engineering Organization's Aeronautical Engineering Establishment (by Press Information Bureau, Government of India) as a scientist following being a member of the Defense Research & Development Service (DRDS). He started his career by designing a small hovercraft, but his choice of a job at DRDO remained unconvinced. Karam is also a member of the INCOSPAR committee and works under the leadership of the famous space scientist Vikram Sarabhai. In 1969, Karam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) as the project leader of India's first satellite launch vehicle (SLV-III). It successfully deployed Rohini satellites in low-Earth orbit in July 1980; in 1965, Kalam began working on an independent scalable rocket project at DRDO. In 1969, Kalam obtained approval from the government and broadened the program to include more engineers. Kalam addresses IIT Guwahati engineering students. 

He visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia from 1963 to 1964; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Flight Facility in Wallops. Karam worked hard in the 1970s and 1990s to develop the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and SLV-III projects which were both successful.

Death

On July 27, 2015, Kalam traveled to Shillong to deliver a lecture at the Shillong Indian Management Institute on "Creating a Livable Planet Earth." He felt some pain when ascending a flight of stairs but after a quick rest he was able to reach the auditorium.