The years 1976 and 1977 he spent at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY) with the group of Gerry Brown.
At the time, he directed the physics department weekly colloquium and was unable to finish the term.
[2] He is known as one of the developers of the Bonn potential[3] to describe the nucleon–nucleon interaction based upon a comprehensive meson exchange model.
Next he dealt with nuclear matter, taking into account meson degrees of freedom and relativistic effects (Dirac–Brueckner–Hartree–Fock).
[4] Since about 2000, Machleidt's main focus has been the development of nuclear forces based upon chiral effective field theory.