Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, into a middle-class Jewish family. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, her father’s pharmacy was nationalized, and the family’s stability was shattered. These formative events, such as the rise of enforced collectivism, and the suppression of individual enterprise, left on her an indelible mark.

Despite restrictions on Jews in Soviet academia, Rand studied history and philosophy at Petrograd State University. In 1926, at age 21, she immigrated to the United States, leaving behind Soviet totalitarianism for the land she would come to call a “moral ideal.”

Her first major success came with The Fountainhead (1943), a novel celebrating creative independence through the story of an uncompromising architect, Howard Roark. But it was Atlas Shrugged (1957), her magnum opus, that fully developed her philosophy of Objectivism, a system centered on reason, individual rights, and laissez-faire capitalism.

Throughout her career, Rand positioned herself as a radical defender of the individual against the encroachments of the collective. Though often shunned by academic philosophers and the literary elite, her books sold millions of copies and shaped the thinking of generations.

Rand died in New York City in 1982 at the age of 77. By then, she had established a legacy that transcended literature, a polarizing, enduring influence on political thought, and the ongoing struggle over the meaning of freedom.