Armstrong walks past his statue at Purdue (AP)

West Lafayette, 0ct. 28 (AP): Neil Armstrong has put his aversion for the limelight on hold briefly and addressed an audience at the dedication of a new engineering building named after him at Purdue University, his alma mater.

Armstrong, the first person to step foot on the moon, said the faculty, not the building’s name, would make it valuable to students.

“We dedicate this building today, but by itself, it cannot impart knowledge. It requires people,” Armstrong, 77, told a crowd of about 350 who had gathered for the dedication.

Armstrong, who graduated from Purdue in 1955 with a degree in aeronautical engineering, gained international fame when the Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module, landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Nasa chose Armstrong to descend a ladder and leave the first human footprints on the moon.

In the decades since, Armstrong has never been as visible as Buzz Aldrin, who followed him out of the Eagle and onto the lunar surface, said James Hansen, an Auburn University professor.

Hansen, who authored Armstrong’s 2005 autobiography, said Armstrong understands his fame, but he has always been a bit uncomfortable with it because it was somewhat coincidental.

“It’s because he was the first,” Hansen said. “He’s embarrassed about that a little bit because he and Buzz landed at the same time. For various reasons, he was the one selected to go down the ladder first.”

Sixteen of Purdue’s 22 graduates who became astronauts attended Saturday’s dedication, including Gene Cernan, who was the last man to walk on the moon in Apollo 17’s December 1972 lunar visit.

Jerry Ross, another Purdue graduate who became an astronaut, said Armstrong has kept his modesty despite his accomplishment and his famous first words on the moon, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

“He’s very common,” Ross said. “Not in the sense that he’s plain, but in the sense that he’s in touch with normal human beings, even though he has done some extraordinary things.”

Purdue’s new $53.2-million engineering research and education building is also a space museum of sorts. The 16.15m high atrium houses a replica of the Apollo 1 command module that fellow Purdue alumni Roger Chaffee and Virgil “Gus” Grissom died in, along with Ed White, when a fire swept the astronauts module during a 1967 launch pad test.