Wings of fire - Sir APJ ABDUL KALAM Wings of fire | Page 24

technologies and expected his students to do the same. I
consulted him before opting for aeronautical engineering.
He told me that one should never worry about one’s future
prospects: instead, it was more important to lay sound
foundations, to have sufficient enthusiasm and an
accompanying passion for one’s chosen field of study. The
trouble with Indians, Prof. Sponder used to observe, was
not that they lacked educational opportunities or industrial
infrastructure—the trouble was in their failure to
discriminate between disciplines and to rationalise their
choices. Why aeronautics? Why not electrical engineering?
Why not mechanical engineering? I myself would like to tell
all novitiate engineering students that when they choose
their specialization, the essential point to consider is
whether the choice articulates their inner feelings and
aspirations.
Prof. KAV Pandalai taught me aero-structure design
and analysis. He was a cheerful, friendly and enthusiastic
teacher, who brought a fresh approach to every year’s
teaching course. It was Professor Pandalai who opened up
the secrets of structural engineering to us. Even today I
believe that everyone who has been taught by Prof.
Pandalai would agree that he was a man of great
intellectual integrity and scholarship—but with no trace of
arrogance. His students were free to disagree with him on
several points in the classroom.
Prof. Narasingha Rao was a mathematician, who taught
us theoretical aerodynamics. I still remember his method of
teaching fluid dynamics. After attending his classes, I
began to prefer mathematical physics to any other subject.
Often, I have been told I carry a “surgical knife” to
aeronautical design reviews. If it had not been for Prof.
Rao’s kind and persistent advice on picking up proofs to
equations of aerodynamic flow, I would not have acquired
this metaphorical tool.
Aeronautics is a fascinating subject, containing within it
the promise of freedom. The great difference between
freedom and escape, between motion and movement,
between slide and flow are the secrets of this science. My
teachers revealed these truths to me. Through their
meticulous teaching, they created within me an excitement
about aeronautics. Their intellectual fervour, clarity of
thought and passion for perfection helped me to launch into
a serious study of fluid dynamicsmodes of compressible
medium motion, development of shock waves and shock,
induced flow separation at increasing speeds, shock stall
and shock-wave drag.
Slowly,