Ayn Rand Biography

Atlas Shrugged About the Author

Ayn Rand was born Alice Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her family was relatively wealthy; Rand's father was a self-made man who owned a pharmacy. According to her biographers, Rand was a precocious child who spent a lot of time among adults, gathering information about the world around her.

At the age of nine, she had already developed a strong fascination about the battle between good and evil, as well as her notion of the characteristics of the ideal man.

"Intelligence, independence, [and] courage" characterize "the heroic man," as she described him to her biographer Barbara Branden. Rand later re-created this model in many of her fictional characters, including the mysterious John Galt, protagonist of Atlas Shrugged.

Rand's keen awareness of her ideological and political surroundings easily detected the problems that began to plague Russia during her childhood; she grew...
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