On 15 October 1931, a boy was born to a Tamil Muslim family on Pamban Island, a pilgrimage center in Rameswaram, then in Madras Presidency and now in the state of Tamil Nadu. His father, Jainulabdeen Markayar, was a boat owner and the imam of a local mosque; His mother Aashiamma was a housewife. They named him Abdul. His father owned a ferry that carried Hindu pilgrims back and forth between Rameswaram and the now uninhabited Dhanushkodi. Kalam was the youngest of four brothers and a sister in his family. Their ancestors were wealthy Markayar merchants and landowners, who owned many properties and large tracts of land. Even though his ancestors were wealthy Markayar merchants, by the 1920s the family had lost most of its wealth and were poverty-stricken by the time Kalam was born. The Marakayars are a Muslim ethnic group found in coastal Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka who claim to be descendants of Arab traders and local women. Their business included trading groceries for pilgrims to and from the mainland and the island, as well as between the mainland and the Pamban. As a young boy he had to sell newspapers to add to the meager income of the family. With the opening of the Pamban Bridge on the mainland in 1914, however, businesses failed and apart from the ancestral home, the family's wealth and assets were lost over time.
In his school years, Kalam's grades were average, but he was described as a bright and hardworking student, with a strong desire to learn. He spent hours on his studies, especially on mathematics. After completing his education at Schwartz Higher Secondary School, Ramanathapuram, Kalam attended St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, then affiliated to the University of Madras, from where he graduated in Physics in 1954. He moved to Madras in 1955 to study aerospace. Engineering at Madras Institute of Technology. While Kalam was working on a senior class project, the dean was dissatisfied with his lack of progress and threatened to cancel his scholarship until the project was finished within the next three days. Kalam met the deadline, impressing Dean, who later told him, "I was stressing you out and asking you to meet a difficult deadline". He missed out on achieving his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, as he finished ninth in the qualifiers, and only eight positions were available in the Indian Air Force.
After graduating from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1960, Kalam joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defense Research and Development Organization (by the Press Information Bureau, Government of India) as a scientist after becoming a member of the Defense Research and Development Service (DRDS). joined. He started his career by designing a small hovercraft, but remained unconvinced of his choice for a job in DRDO. Kalam was also a part of the INCOSPAR committee working under renowned space scientist Vikram Sarabhai. In 1969, Kalam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), where he was the project director of India's first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III), which successfully launched the Rohini satellite into near-Earth orbit in July 1980. was posted; Kalam first started work on an expandable rocket project independently in 1965 at DRDO. In 1969, Kalam received government approval and expanded the program to include more engineers.
From 1963 to 1964, he visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Wallops Flight Facility. Between the 1970s and 1990s, Kalam attempted to develop the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and SLV-III projects, both of which proved successful.
Kalam was invited by Raja Ramanna as a representative of TBRL to witness the country's first nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, even though he did not participate in its development. In the 1970s, Kalam also directed two projects, Project Devil and Project Valiant, which sought to develop ballistic missiles from the technology of the successful SLV program. Despite the disapproval of the Union Cabinet, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, under Kalam's direction through her discretionary powers, allocated secret funds for these aerospace projects. Kalam played an integral role in convincing the Union Cabinet to hide the true nature of these classified aerospace projects. His research and academic leadership brought him much acclaim and prestige in the 1980s, which prompted the government to launch an advanced missile program under his direction. Kalam and Dr VS Arunachalam, metallurgist and scientific advisor to the Defense Minister, worked on the suggestion of the then Defense Minister, R Venkataraman, on the proposal of developing a quiver of missiles instead of taking the planned missiles one after the other. R Venkataraman was instrumental in getting cabinet approval to allocate ₹3.88 billion for the mission, which was named Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP) and appointed Kalam as the chief executive. Kalam played a major role in developing several missiles under the mission, including Agni, an intermediate-range ballistic missile, and Prithvi, a strategic surface-to-surface missile, though projects were mismanaged and overestimated by cost and time. has been criticized for.
