Milan, October 7 (askanews) – The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Frenchman Henry Kagana and Japanese scientist Kenso Soai, the Nobel Committee in Stockholm announced. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Henri Kagana and Kenso Soai "for their discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis," said the Academy's Secretary General, Ellen Monsignor. Henri Kagan was born in 1930 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris-Sud, now the University of Paris-Saclay. Kenso Soai was born in 1950 in Hiroshima, Japan. He is Professor Emeritus at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan. Kagan and Soai revolutionized the study of chirality, the presence of mirror-image molecules, by showing how a small prevalence of one of the two forms can be greatly amplified during a chemical reaction. This result is fundamental, especially for pharmaceutical research, where two apparently identical molecules can have very different biological effects.
Their studies have opened new avenues for asymmetric synthesis, allowing for increasingly selectively obtaining the desired molecular shape. Their discoveries also help explain how, starting from minimal initial differences, the chirality typical of life's molecules could have established itself.
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