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Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai were awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for “the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
Kagan, 95, and Soai, 76, solved a chemical mystery: Some molecules exist in the world that are mirror images of one another. This is a phenomenon known as chirality, from the Greek word from hand (as hands are mirror images of one another). Amino acids are among chiral molecules, and a living organism can only contain one of the versions. The other mirror molecule is found rarely elsewhere in nature. How such imbalance could occur was not understood.
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