I know this picture is a bit grainy and it looks a little like Bob Dylan.
This American kid was born at the turn of the last century, a couple years before my paternal grandmother was born. He became very famous, some would say infamous, and died of natural causes amid old questions of his integrity. He enjoyed riding horses and poetry.
There have been books written about him. There has been at least one movie made about his trials and tribulations. He had a less-famous (though not infamous) brother.
He was Jewish. He was brilliant. Those two things are not connected.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Update: As usual, Althea got it. This J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, father of the atomic bomb, suspected Communist, and brother of Frank Oppenheimer who founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco (bet you didn't know that!).
There is very little video of Oppenheimer. The video below is the only one I could actually find, though I am sure there must be more somewhere (from the trial, or hearing, or whatever it was).
In this video, after a verbal description and some shock-wave footage of the test, we see Oppy talk about the reaction to the first atomic bomb by those involved with the Trinity test. This is his famous "I am become death" statement.
It's interesting to note that although he seems bothered by the bomb's use both in the video and in correspondence at the time, he was giving advice to the military as the bomb was being dropped on Hiroshima.
I read a very good book, called American Prometheus (the link has music, so don't get startled), that is thick (maybe too thick, but so detailed) with details about the suspicion he fell under of being a commie. Check it out (it's where I got the picture, though it is also online in its original form with Ernest Lawrence standing there with Oppy--I cropped it for this post).
I came away from reading the book pretty confident that Oppenheimer was not a commie.
