[1][2][3][4] He is a Wolfson Research Merit Award holder from the Royal Society, and he is currently Professor of Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Specific disciplines are quantum electrodynamics in media, perfect imaging, optical analogues of the event horizon, reverse Casimir effect, metamaterial cloaking, quantum effects of optical phenomena involving Hawking radiation and light in moving media.

In August 2009, the Royal Society's Theo Murphy Blue Skies award allowed Leonhardt to research a new theory for applying metamaterials to optical cloaking full-time.

He later engaged a lawyer to investigate and Science magazine published an article entitled "Show me the Money?

Around half a year later, in a later issue of Science magazine in 2015, Langping He, the Deputy Dean of the Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research (COER) and Academy of Advanced Optoelectronics, South China Normal University, published a response letter titled A Chinese physics institute's defense.