[9][10][11] Leaver was educated at Lyme Regis Grammar School and Imperial College London[5] where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree (first class) followed by a PhD in plant physiology in 1966.
Leaver was the first person to isolate nucleic acids from higher plants in 1964, and produced the first description of the pathway of cytoplasmic ribosomal RNA synthesis.
His more recent and innovative work concerns the structure, information content and expression of the plant mitochondrial genome, a field he has pioneered.
His work has produced strong evidence linking the agriculturally important trait of cytoplasmic male sterility in maize and sorghum with mutations in the mitochondrial genome which lead to the production of variant polypeptides.
[18]Leaver was also awarded EMBO Membership in 1982,[1] elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 1989[19] and appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours.