French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday, according to the National Herald.
The pair were cited “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis” — work the Nobel Committee says solved a chemical mystery more than a century old about why life builds molecules with only one “handedness”, as reported by the ABC.
For readers in Fiji, where medicines reach pharmacy and hospital shelves from overseas manufacturers, the prize lands on the industrial chemistry the committee says those manufacturers depend on to make drugs in the first place.
Key facts
- Kagan, born in France, is an emeritus professor at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay; the National Herald gives his age as 95.
- Soai, born in Japan, is an organic chemist in the Applied Chemistry Department at Tokyo University of Science, Yahoo reports, with a 1979 PhD from the University of Tokyo and a postdoc at the University of North Carolina.
- Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in the committee’s press release that the reactions the two developed “are spectacular”.
- The prize is 12 million Swedish kronor, split equally between the two laureates, Yahoo reports.
Why it matters
The committee’s press release said the duo’s research into molecules’ mirror images has “been decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals”, the ABC reports.
The BBC reports that each mirror-image version of a drug molecule behaves differently in the body: one may have disease-fighting properties while the other does nothing or even causes harm. The National Herald lists drug development, more efficient synthesis with less chemical waste, and new specialised materials among the applications.
The puzzle the pair solved
The BBC explains that chiral molecules come in right- and left-handed forms, and that while nature almost exclusively produces the one version it needs, laboratory reactions usually yield a 50-50 mix of both. The question the laureates answered, the BBC says, was why life favours just one.
The ABC offers a plainer illustration from the committee: one mirror image of the chemical carvone smells like mint, while the other has a whiff of caraway. When designing drugs, the ABC reports, scientists want to be selective about which mirror image they get — the version that treats a cold, not the one that worsens the sniffles.
How the work progressed
Kagan found a new way of manipulating chemical reactions in 1986, allowing a greater excess of one mirror image than had previously been thought possible, the BBC reports. Soai took the next step in 1995 with a paper in the journal Nature describing the first chemical reaction with the potential to be homochiral, and in 2003 succeeded in controlling a reaction in which only one of the two possible mirror images formed.
“Other than life itself,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement quoted by the BBC, “no one had previously achieved this feat”.
Reaction
Speaking to the Nobel press conference by phone, Soai said it was one of the most exciting days of his life and praised the “many, many excellent researchers” in the field, the BBC reports.
Professor Robert Mokaya, president of the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry, the British professional body for chemists, told the BBC the award was a powerful example of how fundamental chemistry can underpin solutions to major societal challenges. Professor Angus Davison of the University of Nottingham, who studies the biology of chirality, said the work could help reveal how and why life favours one-handedness — the foundation, he told the BBC, of hearts sitting on the left side of the body and snail shells coiling to the right.
Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, told the BBC the research is now part of basic understanding of how chemistry functions, and that showing how a mirror image is created is “probably the most fundamental question in life”.
What comes next this week
The Nobel Prize in Literature is due on Thursday and the Peace Prize on Friday, with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences — officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Yahoo notes — to be announced on Monday, October 12. Last year’s chemistry prize went to three scientists for molecular structures that trap large quantities of gas, work the ABC says laid groundwork for pulling greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or harvesting moisture in arid regions. Fiji News will carry the remaining announcements alongside other items in our world brief.
More from Fiji News
Frequently Asked Questions
Which molecules in living things are chiral?
The BBC points to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, as its example of chirality in organic chemistry, and says living organisms on Earth function with only one of the two mirror-image forms.
Who won the other 2026 Nobel Prizes announced so far?
Yahoo reports that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel on Monday. According to the ABC, that award recognised work that led to a tool using light to help unravel how the brain works, while Tuesday’s physics prize — won by University of Wisconsin professor Francis Halzen, Yahoo says — covered a rare group of neutrinos.
When will Kagan and Soai receive their medals?
Yahoo reports the 2026 Nobel Prize award ceremony will be held in Stockholm on December 19, 2026, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. Laureates receive a diploma and a medal along with their share of the prize money.
How often has the chemistry Nobel been awarded?
According to Yahoo, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has now been awarded 118 times to 232 winners. The same report notes Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will created five prizes and that the first awards were conferred in 1901.
