There is a tendency, in certain quarters, to regard experiment as merely the servant of theory — the thing one does to confirm or deny what a brilliant mind has already worked out at a desk.
I reject this view entirely.
Measurement is not the confirmation of theory. Measurement is the interrogation of nature. The two are not the same activity.
When I began studying the uranium rays Becquerel had observed, there was no theory to guide me. There was only a phenomenon: uranium made air conductive. I measured the rate. I controlled variables. I found that the intensity was proportional to the quantity of uranium present, and independent of its chemical state. That last result was essential — it meant the radiation was coming from the atom itself, not from any molecular arrangement. This was not theory. This was measurement speaking.
Theory came later. It came because measurement had created something for theory to explain.
I hold that this is the correct order: observe, measure, reproduce, then theorize. Too much contemporary discussion begins with a mathematical structure and asks afterward whether nature has been consulted. Sometimes she has not.
The elegance of an equation is not evidence for its truth. Only an experiment can provide that.
— M. Curie
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