Award: French and Japanese win Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) has awarded the Nobel Prize in the chemistry category to Frenchman Henri Kagan and Japanese Kenso Soai. They receive the most important prize in science for the “discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.” To put it simply, the researchers have found a way to produce molecules in the desired structure.

Chemistry is the third of a total of six prize categories in which the Nobel Prize winners are announced one after the other at the beginning of October. This week, the two Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine together with the American Karl Deisseroth, before the Nobel Prize in Physics went to the Belgian-American researcher Francis Halzen. Announcements in literature, peace and economics will follow in the coming days.

Last year, Susumu Kitagawa (Japan), Richard Robson (Australia) and Omar Yaghi (USA) were honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of organometallic framework compounds.

With the exception of the one for economic sciences, the Nobel Prizes all go back to the will of the dynamite inventor and prize donor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). Accordingly, an award should be given to those who have provided “the greatest benefit to humanity” in the past year. They are always ceremoniously awarded on the anniversary of Nobel's death, December 10th. The prizes were first awarded in 1901 and are celebrating their 125th anniversary this year. For this occasion, the prize money was increased by one million Swedish crowns to twelve million crowns (1.06 million euros) per prize category. The Nobel Prizes are traditionally presented on the anniversary of Nobel's death, December 10th.