Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Kagan and Soai

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese scientist Kenso Soai for their "discoveries of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."

In the award announcement, it was emphasized that the duo's pioneering work on chiral reactions shed light on a centuries-old paradox in the world of chemistry. The Nobel Committee stated that the spectacular chemical reactions developed by scientists; He stated that it explains how only a single chiral form (homochirality) spontaneously becomes dominant in living organisms in nature and explains the chemical symmetry breaking at the origin of life.

Asymmetric organic synthesis plays a critical role in obtaining molecules with the correct mirror image (enantiomer), especially in the pharmaceutical industry.

The theory of "nonlinear effects" put forward by Henri B. Kagan radically changed the classical understanding of catalysis by proving that even low-purity chiral catalysts could yield products of high optical purity at the end of the reaction.

Kenso Soai, on the other hand, discovered asymmetric autocatalysis through the "Soai reaction" named after him, and showed that the resulting chiral product catalyzes its own reaction and turns even a tiny symmetry deviation into a huge chiral multiplication. These groundbreaking discoveries of the two scientists not only contributed directly to modern synthetic chemistry and drug production processes, but also provided answers to fundamental questions about the evolution of biological molecules.