[6] 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 up hill, against the force of gravity.

[7] 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 2013 the Leigh group reported[13] 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.

[19] However, on 5 October 2016 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to J. Fraser Stoddart, Ben Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.

The ‘Professor David Leigh Prize for Chemistry’ at Codsall Community High School encourages girls and disadvantaged children to study science at university.