The 2026 chemistry prize
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. The academy announced the award on Wednesday in Stockholm. The two share 12 million Swedish crowns, about $1.2 million.
Mirror-image molecules
Many molecules exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, like a left and a right hand. In medicine the two forms can behave very differently in the body, so chemists work to make one and not the other. Kagan, born in France and affiliated with Universite Paris-Sud in Orsay, studied how mixtures of compounds can drive a reaction toward a single mirror form. Soai, born in Japan, 95 years old and affiliated with the Tokyo University of Science, found an autocatalytic reaction in which a product speeds up its own creation. The experiment is now known as the Soai reaction.
Why it matters
The Nobel committee said the work has been decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, flavours, scents and new materials. The findings also touch a long-standing question in chemistry: how life came to favour one mirror form of the molecules it uses.
The chemistry prize is the third of this year's Nobel awards. The medicine prize went on Monday to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries about light-gated ion channels that led to optogenetics, a method that uses light to switch individual nerve cells on and off. The physics prize on Tuesday went to Francis Halzen for his role in the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the detection of high-energy neutrinos from space. The literature prize follows on Thursday, the peace prize on Friday, and the economics prize on Monday. Last year's chemistry prize went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi for metal-organic frameworks.