Who is John Galt?

This is carved into a desk in room 11.01 of the DHT, George Square, Edinburgh.

It is the name of the Scottish novelist (1779-1839) whose books a friend from the University of Essex could not find on the shelves at Blackwells or anywhere else in Edinburgh.

The question is also, to my surprise, the name of an American blog which has as its strapline a line from the speech of the principal character in a book I'd never heard of until this evening's wanderings in googleland - 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand (she of 'The Fountainhead' if any of you know the film or book). The strapline is: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Apparently Ayn Rand used the book to explain her philosophy of Objectivism - reason and individualism and the rejection of force. I leave you all to do your own proper research and reading of the ideas, but it would appear that the Tea Party have adopted Ayn Rand as an iconic figure because of their misunderstanding of her ideas:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/22/tea-party-movement-republicans

You see, join Blip and begin your education!

(But who carved the graffiti - a bored Scot Lit student, or a young American Tea Party supporter at a University summer school?