Career
He was previously the Forbes Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (2001-2012) and Professor of Synthetic Chemistry at the University of Warwick (1998-2001). He is noted for the development of new methods to construct rotaxanes, catenanes and molecular knots and for the invention of some of the first synthetic molecular motors and functional nanomachines. Using mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures he prepared a novel molecular information ratchet that employs a mechanism reminiscent of Maxwell"s demon (although it requires an energy input and so does not challenge the second law of thermodynamics).
He has developed a rotaxane based photoactive molecular switch with the capability of changing the hydrophobicity of a surface and thus causing small droplets of liquid to move "uphill," against the force of gravity.
In 2009 he reported the first small-molecule walker-track system in which a ‘walker’ can be transported directionally along a short molecular track in a manner reminiscent of the way that biological motor proteins ‘walk’ along biopolymers in the cell. In 2011 his research group described the smallest molecular knot prepared to date (a 76-atom-loop trefoil knot - three crossing points) and also the most complex non-deoxyribonucleic acid molecular knot yet constructed (a 160-atom-loop pentafoil knot - five crossing points).
In 2013 the Leigh group reported a small-molecule machine capable of detaching and assembling a series of amino acid building blocks from a track into a peptide of specific sequence, a very primitive version of the task performed by the ribosome.
