Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to two scientists for providing solution to a century-old mystery

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 awarded to two scientists for providing a solution to the chemical mystery of life’s asymmetry. French scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai received the prize for providing the solution to the chemical mystery, which is over a century old.

“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular,” says Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Long a mystery to chemists

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also highlighted that some molecules, such as amino acids, exist as two variants that are each other’s mirror image. However, living organisms only contain one of these mirror images. How chemical asymmetry such as this could have emerged was long a mystery to chemists. Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai are awarded the prize for discovering a solution to this puzzle.

Henri Kagan took the first decisive step in 1986, when he discovered a new way of manipulating chemical reactions. This allowed him to create a greater excess of one of the mirror images than had previously been thought possible, according to the details available.

Kenso Soai took the next step. In 1995, a key publica­tion describes how he designed the first ever chemical reaction that had the potential to be homochiral. In 2003, he finally succeeded. He presented a reaction in which only one of the two possible mirror images was formed. Other than life itself, no one had previously achieved this feat, as per the details.

“Thanks to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai, we now know how homochirality can emerge. Their discoveries have been decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals,” stated the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Chemists wondered how homochirality can emerge

The academy also highlighted that the life’s chemistry is what chemists call homochiral, after the Greek words for “same” and “hand”. Like hands, all amino acids exist as two mirrored variants, but only one of them is found in the proteins in your cells. The other is rarely found in nature.

For a long time, chemists wondered how homochirality can emerge. When they began to experiment with chemical reactions that can form two mirrored molecules, they always obtained equal proportions of both in their test tubes. However, chemists strived to produce only one of these mirror images, because in the development of molecules that will interact with living beings – such as in pharmaceuticals – only one mirror image will have the desired effect.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognises discoveries that have enabled chemists to drive chemical reactions that lead to homochirality.