Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai win 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese chemist Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discoveries involving non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday.
Their work addressed a longstanding question about homochirality: how chemical processes can favor one of two molecular forms that mirror each other like left and right hands. Such forms can behave differently, even though they have the same chemical composition. This distinction is particularly important in pharmaceuticals, where one form may provide a therapeutic effect while the other may be ineffective or cause harmful side effects.
Kagan showed in the 1980s that chemical reactions could produce a greater excess of one mirror-image form than previously thought possible. Soai later developed an autocatalytic process, now known as …