The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on October 7th to French scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese scientist Kenso Soai. Their research has revealed how chemical reactions can selectively form single enantiomer molecules, which is significant for scientists in manufacturing specific mirror-image molecules, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry.
Henri Kagan, aged 95, and Kenso Soai, aged 76, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 7th. According to the press release on the Nobel Prize official website, they were recognized for their foundational contributions in “non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.” Chemical substances that make up life exhibit a unique phenomenon called “homochirality,” where molecules have mirror-image forms similar to human hands. However, living cells predominantly use only one mirror-image form of amino acids to create proteins, while the other form is rarely found in nature.
For a long time, chemists have been curious about how homochirality occurs. When researchers began studying chemical reactions capable of forming two mirror-image molecules, they consistently obtained equal amounts of both forms in test tubes. Yet, chemists have long strived to produce only one mirror-image molecule because in developing molecules that interact with biological entities, such as drugs, usually only one mirror-image form yields the desired effects.
Kagan and Soai’s research has shed light on the factors influencing the formation of single enantiomer molecules. Heiner Linke, the chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Chemistry, stated, “Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided an answer to a century-old chemical puzzle: how homochirality spontaneously occurs. Their developed chemical reactions are remarkable.”
The studies by Kagan and Soai enable chemists to control chemical reactions to form homochiral outcomes.
Kagan took a crucial first step in 1986 by discovering a novel method to manipulate chemical reactions, allowing him to achieve a significantly higher proportion of one mirror-image molecule than previously believed possible.
Soai then made the next advancement. In 1995, he published a pivotal paper describing how he designed the first chemical reaction with the potential to form homochiral compounds. By 2003, he successfully achieved this goal, demonstrating a chemical reaction in which only one of the two possible mirror-image molecules formed. While life in nature already exhibits the selective formation of single mirror-image forms, it was not until Soai’s research that humans succeeded in accomplishing the same in designed chemical reactions.
The Nobel Prize official website noted that the discoveries by Kagan and Soai have a crucial impact on chemists designing chemical reactions for pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Kagan was born in 1930 in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, France. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Collège de France in 1960 and has served as a professor at the University Paris-Sud, France, and is now an Emeritus Professor.
Soai was born in 1950 in Hiroshima, Japan. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Tokyo in 1979 and is currently an Emeritus Professor at the Tokyo University of Science.
In September, the Nobel Foundation announced that the prize money for each award would increase from 11 to 12 million Swedish Krona (approximately 1.2 million USD). If multiple laureates share an award, they will split the prize money, thus Kagan and Soai will each receive about 600,000 USD.
Tomorrow, at 11 am Central European Summer Time, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Next Monday, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, will be announced on October 12th.