Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam 15 October 1931 – 27 July
2015) was an Indian aerospace
scientist who served as the 11th
president of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born and raised in
Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied physics and aerospace
engineering. He spent the next four
decades as a scientist and
science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and was one of the
Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO) and was
intimately involved in India's civilian
space programme and military missile development efforts
[1] He thus
came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the
development of
ballistic missile and launch vehicle
technology.[2][3][4] He also played a pivotal organisational,
technical, and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in
1998, the first since the original
nuclear test by India in 1974.