His father was also the imam of the small mosque in Rameswaram.

Kalam was born on 15 October 1931, the son of a little educated boat owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. Outside of the major Indian languages, Wings of Fire was translated into Chinese (titled Huo Yi, by Ji Peng), and into French by various translators. The autobiography first published in English, has so far been translated and published in 13 languages including Hindi, English, Bangla bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi, and Gujarati. Kalam died on 27 July 2015, during a speech at Indian Institute of Management in Shillong, Meghalaya. During the 1990s and early 2000, Kalam moved to the DRDO to lead the Indian nuclear weapons program, with particular successes in thermonuclear weapons development culminating in the operation Smiling Buddha and an ICBM Agni (missile). He moved to ISRO and helped establish the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and pioneered the first space launch vehicle program. Kalam started his career, after graduating from Aerospace engineering at MIT (Chennai), India, at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and was assigned to build a hovercraft prototype.

Kalam examines his early life, effort, hardship, fortitude, luck, and the chance that eventually led him to lead Indian space research, nuclear and missile programs. Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam (1999), former President of India.

Images of wings of fire