Achim J Leistner trained at Optik Carl Zeiss Jena Germany, qualifying as a precision optical craftsman in 1953. He emigrated to Australia in 1957, where he joined CSIRO to work on the development of state of the art optical fabrication methods, including the Teflon lap technique. He has led the optical fabrication group at CSIRO for over a decade. In 1997 he became Senior Specialist in recognition of his achievements. Leistner has been involved in research to improve the quality and precision of optical surfaces since joining CSIRO. In 2010, he became an Honorary Fellow with the CSIRO Division of Material Science and Engineering.

In 2000, Leistner was awarded OSA’s David Richardson Medal “for the development of novel optical fabrication techniques and the design improvement of optical test equipment. By refining the Teflon lap polishing technique and performing research into the mechanism of optical polishing, he has improved the quality and precision of superpolished optical surfaces, pushing the accuracy of shapes and surface roughness down to nearly atomic dimensions.”