The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the chemistry prize to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
Kagan, 95, is a French professor emeritus at Universite Paris-Sud. Soai is at the Tokyo University of Science. Reuters reported that the pair will share 12 million Swedish crowns, with medals to be presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on December 10.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, described the prize as foundational work on chiral molecules, which exist as non-identical mirror images. The New York Times said the academy called the discoveries decisive for chemists who design reactions used to manufacture pharmaceuticals.
The Royal Society of Chemistry said Soai advanced the field in 1995 and, in later work, presented a reaction in which only one of two mirror-image products formed. Kagan had worked on chirality since the 1960s. The Times noted that some French scientists had questioned his omission when related asymmetric-reaction work was honored in 2001.
Soai told a Tokyo news conference that the mystery of homochirality was not fully solved and that he intended to keep working on it. No further prize in the chemistry sequence was announced on Wednesday.
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- Soai said the mystery was not fully unraveled and that he would continue the research.
- The academy said the discoveries matter to chemists designing pharmaceutical reactions.