Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for unraveling mystery of mirror molecules

(CNN) — Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in chemistry for designing revolutionary experiments that replicated chemical asymmetry, a feat only previously seen in nature.

Their work has solved one of the field’s enduring mysteries and advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award committee said during a news conference on Wednesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The pair’s work hinges on the concept of chirality: that the structure of molecules fundamental to life includes mirror image forms, a little like our hands. However, only one of those variants is actually found in the cells of living things. This phenomenon, known as homochirality, has long puzzled scientists because for years they weren’t able to replicate it in a lab, where chemical reactions usually created a 50-50 mix of both left- and right-handed molecules.

“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,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, in a statement.

In the early 1980s, French chemist Kagan found ways to control chemical reactions with different types of catalysts, allowing scientists to produce a greater excess of one of the mirror image molecules. Soai, a Japanese scientist based at Tokyo University of Science, then built on this work by designing a chemical reaction in which only one of two possible images was formed.

“Other than life itself, no one had previously achieved this feat,” the Nobel committee noted.

Receiving the Nobel Prize marked “one of the most exciting days” in his life, Soai said in a telephone interview during the award presentation. He revealed he had been “out shopping” when he received the call telling him he had won.

The Nobel committee said at the news conference that it hadn’t immediately been able to get hold of Kagan.

Life’s one-handedness puzzle

The duo’s research has both given chemists fundamental new tools that are widely used in their daily work and awakened interest in the chemistry of life’s origins, the committee said.

Phillip Broadwith, the business editor at Chemistry World, which is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, said Kagan’s and Soai’s achievement allowed scientists to choose which mirror image of a molecule to make, a capability which is crucial for manufacturing things like drugs or even flavors and fragrances.

“It also helps to explain a possible way that all the chiral molecules on Earth – our proteins, sugars and biomolecules, settled into one specific handedness rather than the other, so it’s fascinating science,” he added.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for developing “metal-organic frameworks,” a form of molecular architecture that packs vast amounts of space into tiny structures – which the committee likened to Hermione Granger’s magical handbag in the “Harry Potter” novel series.

Kagan and Soai share the 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) chemistry prize announced on Wednesday – the third award announced this week. On Monday, the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to a trio of scientists for their work developing a technique to decode the inner workings of the brain. On Tuesday, the physics prize went to Francis Halzen, a pioneering Belgian astrophysicist whose work developing a massive observatory in Antarctica to detect “ghostly” cosmic particles laid the foundations for “an entirely new type of astronomy,” the committee said.

The literature and peace prizes will be announced on Thursday and Friday, respectively, followed by the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on October 12.

This story and its headline has been updated with additional reporting.

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