​Ayn Rand was born in 1905 as Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia to Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna. She was the oldest of three daughters. Both her parents were Jewish. Her father was a prosperous pharmacist, so the family lived in relative comfort. Ayn (yes we're going to refer to her by her pen first name so it doesn't get confusing) was tutored at home for her first years of schooling, and then enrolled in a progressive school. Ayn was an excellent student, but found herself socially isolated from her peers due to her academic success (the boys were jealous and the girls thought her odd). In 1917, during the heart of the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik forces confiscated her father's shop. The event grew Ayn's resentment in the government's involvement in an individual's life. The event also meant the family descended into poverty in the Crimea.  Ayn, because of her academic excellence, was able to enroll and attend the University of Petrograd in St. Petersburg (known as Leningrad State University at the time). There she studied history extensively (especially the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle), graduating in 1924. She planned to enroll at the State Institute for Cinematography in hopes of becoming a screenwriter.  Ayn had relatives in America, who sent letters from Chicago. Using the pretext of visiting them to gain screenwriting expertise to apply to the Soviet Film Industry, she was granted a visa. In 1926, she fled the Soviet Union to come to the United States, never returning. She was just 21. It was here that she adopted her pen name of Ayn Rand. Ayn (which rhymes with the word pine) came from a similar name of a Finnish writer she read and Rand was an abbreviated form of Rosenbaum. After six months in Chicago, Ayn moved west to Holywood (the glorious city of screenwriting and movie-making). She happened to run into the titan Holywood director Cecil B. DeMille who cast her as an extra in the 1927 film The King of Kings. On the set, she met actor Frank O'Connor. The two were married in 1929. She was then hired as a filing clerk for the wardrobe department at RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. She quickly rose up the ranks becoming the head of the department. In her spare time, she wrote stories, plays, and film scenarios. She gained her U.S. citizenship in 1931 at age 26. She tried to bring her family west from Soviet subjection to America but never succeeded. Later she found out they had been killed during the siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germans during WWII. In 1932, she sold her first screenplay called Red Pawn. Then in 1934, she and her husband moved to New York to oversee the Broadway production of her 1933 play Penthouse Legend (now known as Night of January 16th). During this time, she wrote Ideal, but shelved the manuscript and worked on another project: We, The Living. It received several rejections before being published in 1936. She followed with Anthem in 1938 and began research for The Fountainhead by working for a New York architect. Ayn's work resonated with many Americans due to it's anti-collectivism (and essentially anti-communism) properties. She was a person with a voice from somewhere that everyone in America was anxious to hear about. After seven long years filled with rejection, The Fountainhead was published to mostly bad reviews. However, by word of mouth, the book became a bestseller and was made into a movie. She returned west with her husband to work on the screenplay for the novel, signing a six-month contract to be a screenwriter for indie director Hall Wallis. Following this, she began work on her masterpiece: Atlas Shrugged. Fourteen years after The Fountainhead it blazonly blasted to the forefront of literature as an instant bestseller. This was the most direct statement on her views of collectivism and individualism.  As her fame soared, she met some of her fans, including a Nathaniel Blumenthal (who later changed his name to Nathaniel Branden). When Ayn and her husband moved back east to New York City again, Nathaniel and his wife followed. Ayn held intellectual discussions with some of her "followers" who called themselves the Class of '43. During this time, Ayn designated Nathaniel as her intellectual heir. Things only got weirder.  Ayn honed what she deemed her intellectual philosophy: objectivism. The basic idea is that reality is a concrete place where individuals can discern existing truths, eventually (and hopefully) arriving at the "incredible" moral value of the pursuing self-interest. Nathaniel Branden proposed a business institution to educate others on objectivism. Ayn agreed and that was the end of her time as a novelist, as she focused all of her endeavors on philosophy. The Nathanial Branden Instititute (a little egotistical if you ask me) or NBI was formed. However, the NBI didn't promote critical thinking and like the collective forces it was supposedly against, forced rote development of "sound ideals." Ayn started having an affair with Branden if that wasn't already slightly obvious with the heir naming and everything (this was 1954, so Ayn was 49 and Branden was 24...yuck! Supposedly, though, both of their spouses knew about the affair). In 1962, Ayn and Branden launched The Objectivist Newsletter to promote objectivism even more. Ayn was invited to give speeches and receive interviews virtually everywhere as she became increasingly famous. She began writing political and philosophical nonfiction to support objectivism (The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and For the New Intellectual). In 1968, Ayn discovered that Branden was also having an affair with a younger woman. Enraged, she accused him of betraying objectivism and forced him to relinquish his control as head of NBI and in The Objectivist newsletter. Soon thereafter, the NBI dissolved, which allowed for free-thinking objectivist to develop and form their own philosophies off of Ayn's. Ayn responding to these developments with seething hate, declaring many people's objectivist philosophies as plagiarism of her ideas. She especially despised the libertarians. With Branden out of the picture, Ayn appointed Leonard Peikoff as her new favorite (and intellectual and legal heir). She discontinued The Objectivist in 1971 and replaced it with The Ayn Rand Letter (a bit egotistical if you ask me).  1974 found Ayn undergoing lung surgery to stall her lung cancer. She never quite had the same energy afterwards. In 1979, her husband, Charles Francis "Frank" O'Connor, died after a heartattack. He remained faithful to Ayn his whole life and although he did allow Ayn to pursue an affair with Nathaniel Branden,it took years of pressure on Ayn's part for him to finally concede and assent. It troubled him for years afterward. For the next five years, Ayn spent publishing essays on objectivism in hopes of getting academics to finally acknowledge and accept her work. She was working on a TV series screenplay for Atlas Shrugged when she died at 77.  Following her death, objectivist Barbara Branden (and ex-wife of Nathaniel Branden) published The Passion of Ayn Rand which exposed much of Ayn's affair, treatment of fellow Objectivists, and personal life to the public. The shade thrown did nothing to dent Ayn's book sales. Her works continued to inspire conservatives (especially in the Reagan administration and the rise of the Tea Party movement) and she's still a profoundly popular, yet controversial author today.