Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a Russian-American novelist and philosopher who immigrated to the US in 1926. She is best known for her novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged. Rand founded the philosophy of objectivism, which upholds individualism and reason against collectivism. Objectivism asserts that reality exists independently of consciousness and that the pursuit of self-interest is a moral virtue.