The French-Japanese duo was honoured on 7 October 2026 for explaining how chemical handedness can arise spontaneously, a question open for over a century.

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• Henri B. Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 7 October 2026.
• The citation is for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
• Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist in two mirror-image forms, yet living organisms contain only one of them.
• How this chemical asymmetry, called homochirality, could emerge had been a mystery to chemists for over a century.
• The chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said the laureates showed how homochirality can emerge spontaneously.
• Kagan discovered a new way of manipulating chemical reactions in 1986, while Soai pioneered experiments on the origin of homochirality.
• Kagan is Professor Emeritus at Université Paris-Sud and Soai is Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University of Science.
• Controlling which mirror-image form is made matters for pharmaceuticals, because the two forms can act very differently in the body.
• The prize of 12 million Swedish kronor is shared equally between the two laureates.
• This is the third time the chemistry Nobel has recognised asymmetric catalysis, after the awards of 2001 and 2021.

Tags: NobelPrizeChemistry, Homochirality, AsymmetricSynthesis