Lovelace did not complete his Ph.D., and in 1965 left Imperial College for a position with Daniele Amati at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland.
Instead, the theory yielded strange (hypothetical) entities – named tachyons – that, among other characteristics, had to be able to travel backwards in time and be faster than light, both of which are violations of the ordinary four dimensions of spacetime.
Instead, he continued to increase the number of dimensions until, strangely, at D = 26 the problem with tachyons vanished and unitarity was restored.
[1] Lovelace's observation changed the way that strings are thought about,[4] and the existence of more than four dimensions is today generally accepted in modeling theory.
[5][6] In September 1971, Lovelace moved to Piscataway, New Jersey, where he obtained a professorship at Rutgers University despite his lack of a Ph.D.