Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand [born Alissa Rosenbaum] (2 Feb 1905-6 Mar 1982) was a writer who penned novels like Atlas Shrugged (1957) and The Fountainhead (1943), presenting leaders of big businesses and other great achievers as quasi-Nietzschean heroes. She was also the creator of a new Aristotelian philosophy called Objectivism. Some of her followers have been known for an almost cultish devotion to her and her ideas.

The atheism of Rand and her central characters--Kira in We The Living, Roark in The Fountainhead, and Galt in Atlas Shrugged--is easily established in those works.