"Prof. Dr. Ing. Dr. Sc.
Mult. Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie"
Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie 25 June 1936 – 11 September 2019) was an Indonesian engineer and politician who was the president of Indonesia from 1998 to 1999. Only two months after his inauguration as vice president on March 1998, he succeeded Suharto who resigned after thirty-some years in office. His presidency is seen as a landmark and transition to the Reformation era. Upon becoming president, he liberalized Indonesia's press and political party laws, and held an early democratic election three years sooner than scheduled, which resulted in the end of his presidency. Initially intended to serve until 10 and 11 March 2003 in his respective offices, his eventual 517-day presidency and 71-day vice presidency are the shortest in the country's history.
Habibie was a native of Parepare, now in Indonesia's South Sulawesi Province. His parents, Alwi Abdul Jalil Habibie, an agriculturist of Gorontalese descent, and R. A. Tuti Marini Puspowardojo, a Javanese noblewoman from Yogyakarta,[met while studying in Bogor. Habibie's family comes from Kabila, a village in the eastern part of Gorontalo Province. He was the fourth of eight children. Habibie's father died when he was 14 years old.
In 1962, Habibie returned to Indonesia for three months on
sick leave. During this time, he was reacquainted with
Hasri Ainun, the daughter of R. Mohamad Besari. Habibie had known Hasri Ainun in childhood, junior high school and in senior high school at SMA Kristen Dago (Dago Christian Senior High School),
Bandung. The two married on 12 May 1962, returning to Germany shortly afterwards. Habibie and his wife settled in
Aachen for a short period before moving to Oberforstbach. In May 1963 they had a son, Ilham Akbar Habibie.
Habibie later found employment with the railway stock firm
Waggonfabrik Talbot, where he became an advisor in designing train wagons. Due to his work with Makosh, the head of train construction offered his position to Habibie upon retirement three years later, but Habibie refused the position.
In 1965, Habibie delivered his dissertation in aerospace engineering and received the grade of "very good," giving him the title
Doktoringenieur (Dr.-Ing.). The same year, he accepted Hans Ebner's offer to continue his research on
Thermoelastisitas and work toward his
Habilitation, but he declined the offer to join RWTH as a professor. His thesis about light construction for supersonic or hypersonic states also attracted offers of employment from companies such as
Boeing and
Airbus, which Habibie again declined.
Habibie did accept a position with Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm in Hamburg. There, he developed theories on thermodynamics, construction, and aerodynamics known as the Habibie Factor, Habibie Theorem, and Habibie Method, respectively. He worked for Messerschmitt on the development of the Airbus A-300B aircraft. In 1974, he was promoted to vice president of the company.
In 1974, Suharto recruited Habibie to return to Indonesia as part of his drive to industrialize and develop the country. Habibie initially served as a special assistant to Ibnu Sutowo, Chief Exeutive Officer of the state oil company Pertamina. Two years later, in 1976, Habibie was made CEO of the new state-owned enterprise Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (IPTN). (In 1985, PT. Nurtanio changed its name to Indonesian Aviation Industry and is now known as Indonesian Aerospace (Dirgantara)). In 1978, he was appointed as Minister of Research and Technology. He continued to play an important role in IPTN other "strategic" industries in this post. By the 1980s, IPTN had grown considerably, specializing in the manufacture of helicopters and small passenger planes. Under Habibie's leadership, IPTN became a manufacturer of aircraft including Puma helicopters and CASA planes. It pioneered a small passenger airplane, the N-250 Gatotkaca, in 1995, but the project was a commercial failure. In developing Indonesia's aviation industry, he adopted an approach called "Begin at the End and End at the Beginning". In this method, elements such as basic research became the last things upon which to focus, whilst actual manufacturing of the planes was placed as the first objective.
By 1991, Habibie oversaw ten state-owned industries including ship- and train-building, steel, arms, communications, and energy. A 1993 estimate determined that the estimates used nearly $2 billion a year in state funding, although the government's opaque accounting practices meant that the size of the industries was not completely known.
As minister, Habibie created the OFP (Overseas Fellowship Program), STMDP (Science Technology and Manpower Development Program) and STAID (Science and Technology for Industrial Development). These three programs provided scholarships to thousands of high school graduates to earn their bachelor's degrees in the STEM fields and for other technical professionals to continue their study for master's and doctorate program in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other countries.
