Kalam was born on 15th October in a poor yet humble Muslim family. The family was not quite sound enough with respect to the financial conditions.
Also being brought up among the seven siblings, the family had to face immense pressure.
His father was a fisherman and also used to own boats for allowing the Hindu pilgrims to go past and forth between the town of Rameswaram and that of Dhanushkodi.
Kalam daily used to get up at 4 am, then bathed and then used to attend the Mathematics classes that comprised of only five students in its one whole session.
During the childhood days of Kalam, there was no electricity in the town. Due to this Kalam and the others had to survive in kerosene lamps.These lamps were lit with a span of two hours that of 7 pm to 9 pm.
However since Kalam always studied till 11pm, which is actually more like quite late at that time, his mother Ashiamma used to save some oil for him.
Again since Kalam belonged to a poor family, he started working to support his father at a very young age of only 8 years old.
Soon after the aforementioned mathematics classes were over, Kalam along with his cousin Samsuddin started distributing newspapers, all around the town.
He started his schooling from Schwartz Higher School in Ramanathapuram. He then moved on to complete his graduation in physics from the University of Madras and after that to study aerospace technology from the Madras Institute of Technology.
Dr. Kalam started his career as a scientist from the Aeronautical Development Establishment of DRDO and worked under the eminent scientist Vikram Sarabhai.
He started his contribution as a scientist in 1969 when he was the project director of India’s first satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) was used to launch the satellite Rohini in 1980 and is considered the developer of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
In 2002, Dr. Kalam was elected as the 11th President of India. He had received the title of ‘People’s President.’ He was only the third President to be awarded the Bharat Ratna.
He also imposed President’s rule in Bihar in 2005. However, he did not file for Presidency for a second term and instead returned to the field of academics and continued to do so till his death in 2015.