Philosopher and writer Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum, on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

She was born into a well off family, daughter of a chemist and pharmacy shop owner, Zinovy. 

Alissa was the youngest of three children. She had two sisters, Natasha and Nora, but their interests could not have differed any more.

Alissa was far more interested in going to the cinema and dreaming about film script writing than the traditional girls magazines her sisters enjoyed. 

It wasn’t until the turbulent years of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, in 1917, that she discovered the great romantic writers that became her exemplars for her life’s future writings. Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand are the two writers she credits with being her inspiration.

She and her family moved to Crimea to escape the violence the Revolution had brought. Her family returned to a disheveled hometown where her father’s pharmacy and livelihood had been ‘nationalized’ and plunged the family into poverty nearly overnight.

This was the era in which instilled her hatred of the collectivist thought that was Russian Communism. 

In 1921 Alissa graduated high school and enrolled in the University of Leningrad, at the age of 16. Her studies focused on philosophy and credits Aristotle as her main interest.

Communism was still a huge overbearing presence in her life, where speaking against the government could easily result in a trip to work camps in Siberia.

After graduating college in 1924, she briefly attended a school for screenwriters named the ‘Cinema Institute.’ The very next year she had made up her mind she could not longer live in the oppression of Russia.

The turning-point in her life was when she was granted a temporary leave from Russia to visit relatives living in Chicago, in America. She had no intention of returning to Russia.

Taking a steam liner to America she recalled her first memories after landing in New York Cities as awe inspiring. She departed for her relatives in Chicago and spent 6 months living with them. 

Her greatest joys came from watching movies on a near daily basis at a local movie theatre to improve her English language skills. She also began writing rudimentary movie scripts to improve more.

One year later she had received an extension on her visa and moved to Hollywood and received a letter of recommendation from the DeMille Studios. But upon her arrival she was disappointed to find that DeMille Studios no longer had any positions available.

It was upon a chance encounter was Cecil DeMille himself, only weeks later that led to her invitation to become an extra on his film, ‘King of Kings.’ Later Cecil hired her as a junior screenwriter.

It was on the set og ‘King of Kings’ that Alissa met the love of her life, Frank O’Conner. The eventually married on April 15, 1929, and she became a naturalized citizen thereafter.

She, and her husband continued their work in Hollywood, which led to the eventual purchase of Alissa’s first portable typewriter.

She began writing furiously in her spare time and adopted the pen name, which she is now known for, Ayn Rand. She wrote her first novel, 'We the Living' in 1934. It was a screenplay entitled 'The Red Pawn' that eventually allowed her to become financially independent enough to quit her studio job and focus on writing full time. She sold the screenplay for $1500.

She later moved back to the city in which she first stepped foot in America, New York, and tried desperately to have her family emigrate to America as well, unsuccessfully.

Her second novel, ‘Anthem’ was written in 1937, and published in England the following year, and the United State in 1945. It is a story of totalitarian collectivist society in which one man dared to defy the world.

It wasn’t until the 1940s that sprang Rand into stardom. ‘The Fountainhead’ was written in 1938, published in 1942, and solidified her writing style of individualism of ‘man as hero.’ Her philosophical inspirations included stories of morality of rational egoism, reason, individualism, and capitalism; brought together they were a new form of thought: objectivism.

Later, in 1950, Rand began her most ambitious, controversial, lengthy, and awe-inspiring novel, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ to encompass all of her philosophy of Objectivism. She worked full time on the 1500 page novel for seven full years. She spent two full years of that time working on refining one 57-page section that was a speech that the main character, John Galt, made to the world.

This was Rand’s final novel, and a climactic end. 

She later devoted her live to her philosophical endeavors, publishing the book, ‘For the New Intellectual’ in 1961. She also started ‘The Objectivist Newsletter,’ a monthly magazine-like publication that was the epitome of her philosophy of life. Her final work of writing was a popular and vastly criticized book, ‘The Virtue of Selfishness.’ It was published in 1964.

For the remainder of her life she spent time giving lectures to full-house crowds at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and being interviewed on her philosophy. She never backed down from her Objectivist view of a free world that includes free minds, and free markets.

Ayn Rand died at the age of 78, at her home in the city in which she set foot in, New York. The city had always symbolized the pinnacle of freedom that she believed America was the essence of.


Sources:

http://www.atlassociety.com/rand.asp
http://www.aynrand.org/aynrand/biography.shtml
http://ellensplace.net/ar_index.html