Alice O'Connor, better known by her pen name Ayn Rand, was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is best known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, helped her achieve fame but she is best known for her final fiction publication the novel Atlas Shrugged. In it she advocates the role of the mind in human existence and expresses her core concepts of human achievement.