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I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six I taught myself to read and two years later I discovered my first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, giving me motivation to write about heroes. At the age of nine I decided to make fiction writing my career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, I thought of myself as a European writer, especially after encountering Victor Hugo.I was an eye witness to the Kerensky Revolution which I supported and the Bolshevik Revolution which I denounced. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, I immediately took America as my model of what a nation of free men could be.I entered the University of Petrograd to study philosophy and history. By graduation in 1924, I experienced the disintegration of free inquiry and the takeover of the university by communist thugs. My one great pleasure was Western films and plays. I soon entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screen writing.In late 1925 I obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. I told Soviet authorities that my visit would be short, but I was determined never to return to Russia. I arrived in New York City in February 1926. Spending the next six months with my relatives in Chicago, I obtained an extension to my visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screen writer. I became an extra then a script reader for the movie "The King of Kings," by Cecil B. Demille. This is where I met Frank O' Connor, whom I married in 1929, until his death fifty years later.I sold my first screenplay, "Red Pawn," to Universal Pictures in 1932 and saw my first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. My first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1934 but was rejected by numerous publishers, until The Macmillan Company in the United States and Cassells and Company in England published the book in 1936. This book was based on my years in Soviet Russia and the tyranny I experienced.In The Fountainhead, I presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of my writing: the ideal man, man as "he could be and ought to be." My book was rejected by twelve publishers but finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. When published in 1943, it made history by becoming a best seller through word-of-mouth two years later, and gained for me a lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.In 1946 I began working on my major novel, Atlas Shrugged. In 1951 I moved back to New York City and devoted herself full time to the completion of Atlas Shrugged.Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was my greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel I dramatized my unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. In order for me to write philosophically, I had to develop and construct my own philosophy.After Atlas Shrugged, I lectured my philosophy—Objectivism, which I characterized as "a philosophy for living on earth.". I published and edited my own periodicals from 1962 to 1976, my essays providing much of the material for six books on Objectivism and its application to the culture.Every book published in my lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totaling more than twenty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. My vision of man and my philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment.