阿卜杜勒·卡拉姆

阿卜杜勒·卡拉姆（英语：Abdul Kalam；1931年10月15日—2015年7月27日），印度科学家、政治家，被誉为印度“导弹之父”，第11任印度总统。

生平

1931年10月15日生于印度南方的泰米尔纳德邦的特努什戈迪，是穆斯林，父亲是村务委员会的领导，未受过太好的教育。

卡拉姆小时候曾在一个印度圣城卖报纸。1958年取得马德拉斯理工学院航太工程硕士学位。毕业后加入国防研究及发展组织，1963年，开始在印度空间研究组织从事航天技术研究工作，在卡拉姆的努力下，导弹研制成了印度国防科技领域最大的亮点。大地、烈火、三叉戟等一系列导弹的点火升空，为他赢得了印度“导弹之父”的美名。

1982年，担任印度国防研究和发展组织(DRDO)的负责人。因为在印度国防科研领域的突出贡献，1997年印度政府将印度最高文职奖“印度奖”颁发给这位被人称为“导弹之父”的老人。他是惟一获得该奖的科学家。

卡拉姆是一位传奇人物，是一位执著于事业的人，但也有很多凡人的一面。他平日生活俭朴，衣着随意，一头银色的卷发在印度可算是风格鲜明。

卡拉姆还是个素食者，而且滴酒不沾。据卡拉姆自己说，最初素食是因为当时拮据的生活状态，到后来经济宽裕了，但素食的习惯却保留下来。除了渊博的知识，所有接触过卡拉姆的人还被他的直爽和平易近人所折服。不仅如此,他还是出色的管理者，“印度太空研究组织”的成功就是最好的证明。

2002年7月，当选印度总统。卡拉姆在印度人民院获得当时执政的印度人民党和在野的印度国大党的一致支持。他的同事们说，如果他能成为印度的下一任总统，他一定会更努力地将自己的梦想变为现实。卡拉姆现在正致力于一个名叫“印度千年任务2020”的计划，其目标是将印度带入发达国家的行列。

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam ( UB-duul kə-LAHM; 15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace engineer and science administrator who served as president of India from 2002 to 2007. In 1997, he was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to the scientific research and modernisation of defence technology in India.

Born and raised in a Muslim family in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Kalam 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 (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India's civilian space programme and military missile development efforts. He is popularly 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 organisational, technical, and political role in Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, India's second such test after the first test in 1974.

Kalam was elected as the president of India in 2002 with the support of both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress. He was widely referred to as the "People's President". He engaged in teaching, writing and public service after his presidency. While delivering a lecture at IIM Shillong, Kalam collapsed and died from an apparent cardiac arrest on 27 July 2015, aged 83. Thousands attended the funeral ceremony held in his hometown of Rameswaram, where he was buried with full state honours. A memorial was inaugurated near his home town in 2017.

Early life and education

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on 15 October 1931 to a Tamil Muslim family in the pilgrimage centre of Rameswaram on Pamban Island, Madras Presidency (now in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu). His father, Jainulabdeen Marakayar, was a boat owner and imam of a local mosque, and his mother, Ashiamma, was a housewife. His father owned a boat that ferried Hindu pilgrims between Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi.

Kalam was the youngest of four brothers and a sister in the family. His ancestors had been wealthy Marakayar traders and landowners, with numerous properties and large tracts of land. Marakayar are a Muslim ethnic group found in coastal Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka who claim descent from Arab traders and local women. The family business had involved trading goods and transporting passengers between the Indian mainland and the Pamban Island and to and from Sri Lanka. With the opening of the Pamban Bridge connecting Pamban Island to mainland India in 1914, the businesses failed. As a result, apart from the ancestral home, the other family fortune and properties were lost by the 1920s, and the family was poverty-stricken by the time Kalam was born. As a young boy, he delivered newspapers to support the family's meagre income.

In his school years, Kalam got average grades but was described by his teachers as a bright and hardworking student with a strong desire to learn. He spent hours learning Mathematics. He did his schooling at Schwartz Higher Secondary School in Ramanathapuram. He then graduated in Physics from St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, in 1954.

Kalam moved to Madras in 1955 to study aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology. While he was working on a class project, the Dean of the institution was dissatisfied with his lack of progress and threatened to revoke his scholarship unless the project was finished within the next three days. Kalam met the deadline, impressing the Dean, who later said to him, "I was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline." Later, he narrowly missed out on his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, as he placed ninth in qualifiers, and only eight positions were available in the Indian Air Force.