The newest model, Kindle Keyboard/Fire, and the Deluxe model, Kindle DX, natively support the PDF format, so converting the files from PDF to a digital book format is no longer needed for these versions of Kindle models.
Previous models, Kindle (1 and Touch), recognize digital books in .azw, .txt, .mobi or .prc formats. Thus, in order to view PDF files on this version of Kindle, you have to convert those to a format recognized by it. Read below how you can convert from a normal format to PDF and after that sending it to Kindle (1 and Touch).