Kagan and Soai win 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday to French scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese researcher Kenso Soai for discoveries that explain how molecular asymmetry essential to life emerges through autocatalysis and non-linear effects in asymmetric organic synthesis.

Mirror-image molecules

Some molecules exist in two forms that mirror each other like left and right hands, yet living organisms use only one mirror-image form of amino acids in proteins—a phenomenon known as homochirality that has puzzled researchers for over a century. Understanding how this preference emerges has proven crucial for pharmaceutical development, as different mirror-image forms of the same molecule can produce vastly different effects in the body.

Academy citation

The academy specifically honored the pair "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis," according to a statement issued in Stockholm. Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: "Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular."

Breakthrough timeline

Kagan achieved a decisive advance in 1986 by developing methods to manipulate chemical reactions to produce a greater excess of one mirror-image form than previously thought possible, laying the groundwork for the field. Soai advanced this work in 1995 by designing a reaction with the potential to generate only one mirror-image form, eventually demonstrating such a reaction successfully in 2003.