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Kagan and Soai Win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
In brief
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has gone to French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese chemist Kenso Soai for work on chirality, the puzzle of why living things use only one of two mirror-image forms of many molecules.
Many molecules, including the amino acids that build proteins, come in left- and right-handed versions that mirror each other like a pair of hands. Life on Earth uses almost only one version, while ordinary lab reactions usually make a 50-50 mix. The Nobel Committee said the two laureates showed how this one-sided pattern, called homochirality, can arise on its own.
According to the BBC, Kagan, of Université Paris-Sud, found a way in 1986 to steer reactions so they produce a larger excess of one form than scientists had thought possible. Soai, of the Tokyo University of Science, described in 1995 a reaction that could in principle produce only one form, and in 2003 he succeeded in controlling a reaction that made just one of the two mirror images.
The work matters for medicine because the two forms of a drug molecule can act very differently in the body: one may treat a disease while the other does nothing or causes harm. Soai told the prize press conference it was "one of the most exciting days of my life".
Why it matters
Better control of which mirror-image form a reaction makes helps chemists produce safer, more effective medicines, and it sheds light on one of the oldest questions about how life began.
Sources
- NobelPrize.org: Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026
- BBC News: Chemistry Nobel awarded for solving mystery of life's asymmetry
- NPR: Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai win Nobel Prize in chemistry
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