The fruit of several drafts, the play was born in the years immediately preceding World War II, which saw the experimentation and use of atom splitting for war purposes. This was the period in which a terrifying rift between technical and social progress was definitively established. The figure of Galileo, the scientist whose revolutionary insights threatened to undermine the theological and social balance of his time, and who retracted for fear of torture and a lack of heroic commitment, is a metaphor for the modern scientist, the intellectual persecuted by the inexorable duality of science and fanaticism. Yet, despite his inner conflict and contradictions, this Brechtian Galileo is a richly human figure, modern precisely because, while brilliantly asserting the truth against ignorance, superstition, and conformism, he remains perpetually balanced between two fronts. An implicitly anti-atomic drama, “Life of Galileo” maintains today, beyond its extraordinary scenic effectiveness, a notable relevance precisely by thematizing the figure of “weak” scientists, subordinate to political power, venal “gnomes”, too often lacking ethical courage.