Editorial note to: R. H. Dicke, The Theoretical Significance of Experimental Relativity

In the mid-1950s the experimental study of gravity physics was close to inactive. Robert Dicke saw the need and opportunity to employ advances in technology to improve the classical tests and add to them. His book, “The Theoretical Significance of Experimental Relativity,” and the preceding lectures on which it was based, describes how he was going about it in his Gravity Research Group. There was theoretical motivation for some of his experiments. Others followed the experimentalists’ mantra: if an experiment of possible physical interest can be done better, then do it. It was the start of what has grown to be the rich subject of experimental gravity physics.