He was born in
Tumkur in the state of
Mysore, India in 1939 to Abdul Azeem, an Islamic scholar of the
Qadiriyya. In 1952, he achieved the first rank in the entire state of Mysore and won the Maharaja of Mysore Gold Medal. He has been known as “Rank Nazeer Ahmed” due to the consistency with which he ranked first in state and interstate exams. He entered the
California Institute of Technology in 1961 as an Institute Scholar as well as a Tata Scholar. He was awarded MS and AeE degrees from Caltech. He worked in
Huntsville,
Alabama on the Saturn, Apollo and Lunar Land Rover Projects at the
Marshall Space Flight Center in 1964–65. He obtained a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from
Cornell University in 1967. Under Peter Drucker he studied management at
New York University. He then obtained an
MBA from
Rider University,
New Jersey. == Teachers ==