Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for the mirror molecule mystery

A riddle more than a century old, about why life builds with only one of two mirror-image forms, finally has an answer.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 chemistry prize jointly to Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud and Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Many molecules come in two forms that mirror each other like a pair of hands, yet living things are built from only one; the academy said the two laureates provided the solution to a chemical mystery over a century old, namely how that single-handedness can emerge spontaneously. Kagan found how to drive a reaction toward a far greater excess of one mirror image than had been possible before, and Soai later achieved a reaction producing only one of the two possible mirror images, a feat the academy said had previously been accomplished only by life itself. The award is 12 million Swedish kronor, shared equally between them.