Date of Birth
2 February 1905,
St. Petersburg, Russia
Date of Death
6 March 1982, New York, New York, USA (lung cancer)
Birth Name
Alisa Rosenbaum
Height
5' 2" (1.57 m)
Spouse
| Frank O'Connor |
(15 April 1929 - 9 November 1979) (his death) |
Trade Mark
Extremely analytical.
Piercing eyes.
Trivia
She appears on a 33 cent U.S. postage stamp, which debuted 22 April 1999, in New York City.
Was a "friendly witness" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, testifying on Communist influences in film.
At the time of her death, she was working on the script for a television adaptation of her novel "Atlas Shrugged".
She called her philosophy of rational selfishness "Objectivism", and wrote what would be her last novel, "Atlas Shrugged", as an illustration of it. She spent her later years writing articles, books and a newsletter on Objectivism.
Her belief: Rational selfishness is a virtue; altruism (self-sacrifice), a vice.
She met future husband Frank O'Connor on the set of The King of Kings (1927), and they married in part because her visa was about to expire.
Had a longtime amphetamine prescription for "weight control"; it is believed that this may have influenced some of her later behavior and decision-making. However, her biographer and longtime friend, Barbara Branden, insists that the dosage was very low, and that when told of the risk, Rand easily stopped taking the drug.
Stayed with relatives in Chicago when she first came to the U.S., but nearly drove them crazy with her late hours spent typing and improving her English skills. Moved to Hollywood to get into the movie business, since it was still the silent-film era and the demand was more for scenarios than actual dialogue.
Turned twenty-one during her voyage to America, and also changed her name, in part to protect her family back in Soviet Russia. "Ayn" (rhymes with "mine") came from a Finnish author. The exact origin of her last name is uncertain; however, in 1936, she told the New York Evening Post that 'Rand is an abbreviation of my Russian surname.' An oft-repeated story claims that Ayn Rand took her last name from her Remington Rand typewriter while she was living in Chicago in 1926, but this is not true because the Remington and Rand companies did not merge until 1927; 'Rand' did not appear on their (or any) typewriters until the early 1930s. Yet another theory is that "Rosenbaum" spelled out in Russian Cyrilic letters resembles "Rand Ayn" in English Latin letters. She kept her initials A.R.; explaining later "Two kinds of people keep their initials when they change their names - criminals and writers," to her proteg
Ayn Rand Centenary. 05.01.30.
Image:Ayn Rand Marker.jpg
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