The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three spatial dimensions plus time are sufficiently small that they haven't been observed yet.

This had implications for low-dimensional topology and led to quantum invariants such as the Witten–ReEdward Wittentikhin–Turaev invariants. He is the son of Lorraine (Wollach) Witten and Louis Witten a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity. With Gary Horowitz Philip Candelas and Andrew Strominger Witten showed how string theory can lead to realistic descriptions by compactifying the theory on a higher dimensional manifold known as Calabi–Yau manifolds.

Witten is a researcher in superstring theory a theory of quantum gravity supersymmetric quantum field theories and other areas of mathematical physics. He has made contributions in mathematics and helped bridge gaps between fundamental physics and other areas of mathematics.