Wings of Fire

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, the son of a little-educated boat-owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, had an unparalleled career as a defence scientist, culminating in the highest civilian award of India, the Bharat Ratna. As chief of the country’s defence research and development programme, Kalam demonstrated the great potential for dynamism and innovation that existed in seemingly moribund research establishments. This is the story of Kalam’s rise from obscurity and his personal and professional struggles, as well as the story of Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul and Nag—missiles that have become household names in India and that have raised the nation to the level of a missile power of international reckoning. This is also the saga of independent India’s struggle for technological self-sufficiency and defensive autonomy—a story as much about politics, domestic and international, as it is about science.

What Hacker News says

sedawkMay 2024

In no particular order...

0. Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony, by Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura

1. The Practice of Programming (TPOP) , by Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike

2. Wings of Fire, by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Arun Tiwari

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ninja_to_beJul 2015

I'm deeply saddened by the demise of Dr. Kalam. He inspired me a lot when I was a kid back in school. His books "Ignited Minds" and "Wings of Fire" are highly inspiring and are filled with hope for India.

His passion was to inspire and ignite young minds and encourage them to propel India on a global scale. His numerous interactions with school children, political leaders, industrialists and scholars have a common theme - India can do it.

On small example of how he always tries to look out for the benefit of everybody: "A school in Madurai had organized an event and invited Dr. Kalam as the chief guest. He initially declined the invitation saying that it would benefit only private school students. Then the school had to modify their plans and invited over 500 students from various other government schools in the vicinity to attend the event too. Only then did he agree to be the chief guest of the event. "

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swatkatSep 2014

@enupten,

Following books provide an excellent insight on ISRO's beginnings and growth. They are a superb read:

"A Brief History of Rocketry in ISRO" by P V Manoranjan Rao, P Radhakrishnan

"India's Rise as Space Power" by UR Rao

"Wings of Fire" by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, with Dr. Arun Tiwari

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chdirJul 2015

Adieu to a great man, https://twitter.com/APJAbdulKalam

"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep." ― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography

Some of his books : http://www.amazon.com/A.-P.-J.-Abdul-Kalam/e/B001H9RNS0/

Brief from Wikipedia : 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 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 India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

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quarterwaveJun 2014

In his autobiography 'Wings of Fire', A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, himself an ISRO rocket scientist & program director who later became a highly popular President of India (he draws crowds to this day, several years after office), quotes Gen. Patton: "A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." That could well summarize the ISRO style.

Kalam also highlights the leadership-by-open-discussion style of Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan who successively headed ISRO in its formative years. If that sounds commonplace, bear in mind this was in a civilian government organization of the 1960's. People like Sarabhai (a Cambridge Tripos and inheritor of a family business empire) and Dhawan (a double PhD in math and aerospace from Caltech) could have played the part and been overbearing - but they deliberately chose to build a "startup culture" where people were encouraged to speak up.

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