A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen A. P. J. Abdul Kalam was the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. A career scientist turned politician, Kalam 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 Development Organisation and Indian Space Research Organisation and was intimately involved in Indias civilian space program and military missile development efforts. 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. He also played a pivotal organizational, technical, and political role in Indias PokhranII nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born onOctober 1931 to a Tamil Muslim family in the pilgrimage centre of Rameswaram on Pamban Island, then in the Madras Presidency and now in the State of Tamil Nadu. His father Jainulabudeen was a boat owner and imam of a local mosque his mother Ashiamma was a housewife. His father owned a ferry that took Hindu pilgrims back and forth between Rameswaram and the now uninhabited Dhanushkodi. Kalam was the youngest of four brothers and one sister in his family. His ancestors had been wealthy traders and landowners, with numerous properties and large tracts of land. Their business had involved trading groceries between the mainland and the island and to and from Sri Lanka, as well as ferrying pilgrims between the mainland and Pamban. As a result, the family acquired the title of Mara Kalam iyakkivar , which over the years became shortened to Marakier. With the opening of the Pamban Bridge to the mainland in 1914, however, the businesses failed

Source: Wikipedia