S. Nambi Narayanan
The Man Who Put India Forward in Rocket Race
S. Nambi Narayanan (born 12 December 1941) is an Indian scientist and an aerospace engineer. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award by the Government of India. The scientist was instrumental in developing the Vikas engine that would be used for the first PSLV that India launched. As a senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), he was in-charge of the cryogenics division. In 1994, he was falsely charged with espionage and arrested. The charges against him were dismissed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in April 1996, and the Supreme Court of India declared him not guilty in 1998.
Here's a time line of S. Nambi Narayanan
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Early life:
S. Nambi Narayanan was born into a middle-class Tamil family on 12 December 1941 in Nagercoil, Travancore, which is in present-day Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu, where he also completed his schooling at DVD Higher Secondary School....
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Career
Narayanan first met Vikram Sarabhai, the then Chairman of ISRO, in 1966 at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram, while he worked as a payload integrator with another eminent scientist Y. S. Rajan there. Also chairman of the Space Science and technology Centre (SSTC) at the time, Sarabhai only recruited highly qualified professionals. In pursuit, Narayanan enrolled at the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram for his MTech degree.....
Espionage charges
In 1994, Narayanan was charged with leaking vital defence secrets to two alleged Maldivian intelligence officers, Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. Defense officials said the secrets pertained to highly confidential "flight test data" from experiments with rocket and satellite launches. Narayanan was among two scientists (the other being D. Sasikumaran) that were accused of selling the secrets for millions. However, his house seemed nothing out of the ordinary and did not show signs of the corrupt gains he was accused of.
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Books and popular culture
- Ormakalude Bhramanapadham
- Ready To Fire: How India and I Survived the ISRO Spy Case