Ayn Rand
Born: St. Petersburg, Russia
Author Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg in 1905, in what was formerly known as the Russian Empire but is now just Russia. Rand’s childhood was spent in the last years of Imperial rule, during which she enjoyed a fairly easy life, attending a prestigious school and engaging in the sorts of intellectual debates one would expect of such a prolific writer and thinker. In 1917, however, the Russian Empire came crashing down, with the Bolshevik’s ousting Tsar Nicholas II and many families—including the Rosenbaums—fleeing the strife of the major cities. During that time, Rand’s family moved to the Crimean Peninsula, though they later moved back to St. Petersburg.
Rand was among the first women allowed to attend university in Russia—a benefit that came around after the Russian Revolution. Her studies there were briefly cut short by a purge that removed the bourgeoise from schools, but she was eventually allowed to return, and she graduated in 1924.
During all of her school years, Rand always had a passion for big ideas about philosophy and society—ideas that she originally wanted to convey through screenplays. In late 1925, she was sent to visit relatives in Chicago and fell in love with the United States. Refusing to return to Russia, Rand spent several months with her U.S. family and then headed to Hollywood to pursue her screenwriting dreams. There, she met famed director Cecile B. DeMille, who gave her a role as an extra on his film The King of Kings and then a position as a junior screenwriter.
While working on The King of Kings, Rand met actor Frank O’Connor and the two married in 1929. Two years later, Rand received her American citizenship, and from the outset was engaged with American politics and the philosophies behind it. Ayn Rand and Frank O’Connor worked as full-time volunteers on the failed 1944 presidential campaign of Wendell Wilkie, which led to Rand meeting many other intellectuals interested in the same ideas that she was. She began a public speaking career, where she questioned American history and politics while suggesting her own ideas for how society could be better arranged. These ideas form the basis of many of her most famous works, including The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Perhaps even more interesting than Rand’s ideas themselves is how, as an immigrant, she has been able to permeate Americans’ own ideas about the culture they inhabit. In 1991, Library of Congress book club members voted Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book in their lives, second only to the Bible.