Nathaniel Branden wrote Ayn Rand a fan letter when he was a teenager in Canada in the 1940s. He wanted to tell her how much he admired “The Fountainhead,” her novel about a brilliant architect’s proud resistance to what he perceived as the world’s inclination toward collectivism and mediocrity.
Ms. Rand did not respond, but Mr. Branden did not give up.
A few years later, while attending college in California, he wrote to her again. This time she did respond, and then some.
In relatively short order, they became philosophical soul mates, unlikely lovers and business associates. He was 25 years younger than she and, like her, married to someone else. That hardly mattered. Both believed in “rational selfishness” and unlimited capitalism, theories Ms. Rand embraced in “The Fountainhead” (1943) and her later blockbuster, “Atlas Shrugged,” which was published in 1957 and originally dedicated to both her husband, Frank O’Connor, and Mr. Branden.
Mr. Branden, who was 84 when he died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles County, would go on to change his name at Ms. Rand’s suggestion (it had been Nathan Blumenthal) and to become perhaps her most ardent disciple. In 1958 he started the Nathaniel Branden Institute, where he helped repackage her ideas — Objectivism, she called her philosophy — into lectures, recordings, books and articles.
For the next decade, theirs was a distinctive and largely productive collaboration — at Ms. Rand’s insistence, both of their spouses knew of their extramarital relationship, though few outside their inner circle did — and it raised both her profile and his. Founded in New York, the Nathaniel Branden Institute grew to have branches in dozens of cities. Among its speakers was Alan Greenspan, the future chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
