Nobel chemistry prize goes to Kagan and Soai for asymmetric synthesis work

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan, according to TASS, Vedomosti, Meduza and Habr News. The citation, as given by Vedomosti and Meduza and repeated in Habr News’s summary, is for “the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.” TASS reported the laureates as scientists from France and Japan. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]

The work addressed a question the documents describe as more than a century old: how living nature ends up with only one of two mirror forms of a molecule. Vedomosti explained that amino acids exist in two mirror varieties, as human hands do, but proteins in cells contain only one of them, and that reactions capable of forming both forms had always yielded equal proportions. Meduza made the same point, noting that natural sugars take only the right (D) form and amino acids the left (L) form, and that such an excess occurs in the surrounding world almost exclusively in natural compounds made by enzymes. For medicines and molecules that interact with living organisms, Vedomosti said, only one form is needed, while the second may be useless or even dangerous. [ 2 , 3 ]

Vedomosti described Kagan’s 1986 finding as the first decisive step: a new way of controlling chemical reactions that produced a considerably larger excess of one mirror form than had previously been thought possible. Soai continued the research, publishing in 1995 a paper describing the first chemical reaction capable of leading to homochirality, and in 2003 presenting a reaction in which only one of the two possible mirror forms was produced — something, Vedomosti said, that until then only nature had managed. Habr News summarised the same sequence, describing Soai’s autocatalytic reaction as reproducing the natural phenomenon. Meduza said the work showed that an excess of one mirror variant can arise spontaneously when reaction products can shift the balance toward one form. [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]

Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the reactions developed were “elegant” and that the laureates’ discoveries solved a century-old puzzle, according to Vedomosti. Vedomosti reported that the prize of 12 million Swedish kronor will be divided equally between the laureates, that Kagan was born in 1930 in France and Soai in 1950 in Japan, and that both are honorary professors. Habr News’s summary gave the laureates’ institutions as Université Paris-Sud and Tokyo University of Science; no other document names their affiliations. [ 2 , 4 ]

Meduza reported that the laureates were announced in Stockholm and noted that the 2025 chemistry prize went to Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi for “the development of metal-organic frameworks.” It said the 2026 literature laureate will be announced on 8 October, the peace prize in Oslo on 9 October and the economics prize on 12 October, and that the medicine or physiology and physics laureates had already been named. [ 3 ]