John Galt was born in 1919, in Ohio, in a nondescript town that [[Hugh Akston]] described as a "crossroads." His father was an automobile mechanic who worked at one of the first automobile "service stations."
At the age of twelve he left home "to make his own way." How he came to the [[Patrick Henry]] University (not to be confused with the actual [[Patrick Henry College]] set up by [[Jerry Falwell]]), Akston does not tell, but Akston describes him as "out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less." He came determined to pursue a double major: [[physics]] and [[philosophy]], the science of the world and the science of the mind. While at PHU, he met two other students who entered when he did, each of whom had a background radically different from his. One was [[Francisco d'Anconia|Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia]], the current descendant of a famous Spaniard who established the family fortune by digging for copper in the [[Andes Mountains]] of [[Chile]]. The other was [[Ragnar Danneskjold]], a Scandinavian [[Norway|Norwegian]] aristocrat. (His specific nation of origin is never specified.) The three, remarkably, were sixteen years old.
Remarkably, ''all three'' pursued the double major in physics and philosophy. The three men also became fast friends.
The chairmen of the two department departments they had chosen to major in—[[Robert Stadler]] of the physics department and Akston of the philosophy department—recognized at once the brilliance of these three students. Akston knew this when the three walked into a postgraduate philosophy course, and Galt asked a pointed question about Plato's metaphysical system that Akston would not have expected even one of his scholarly colleagues to be able to answer. Stadler and Akston allowed the three to pursue the double major, and suspended a number of rules that normally would have prohibited such a curriculum—but they gave the students to understand that they would have to work for it. Work they did, and graduated with distinction in both subjects.
Not a man among the three suspected how closely they would be working together after they graduated.