Daily Quiz for January 7, 2009

St. Petersburg, Russia. Author and social philosopher Ayn Rand, whose work espoused her political-economic philosophy of Objectivism, capitalism and what she called “rational selfishness,” was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. She graduated from the University of Leningrad in 1924 and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a citizen in 1931. In Objectivism, the individual alone and his acts of self-interest are seen as the positive driving force of society. Rand rejected ideologies of altruism and self-sacrifice. Her novels Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) and a number of non-fiction works brought wide recognition to her and her theories. Rand founded the journal The Objectivist in 1962. She died in 1982.