Japan's Kenso Soai shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with France's Henri B. Kagan

7 October 2026

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has gone jointly to Henri B. Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan.
The citation is for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
Each laureate takes half the prize.
Their work explains how a reaction can end up producing only one of two mirror-image forms of a molecule.
Those mirror forms are like a left and a right hand; in the proteins of living cells only one of the pair is found.
That single-handed state of life's molecules is called homochirality, and the prize-winning chemistry shows how a tiny imbalance can grow into it.
Autocatalysis means a reaction speeded up by one of its own products, so the right-handed or left-handed form makes more of itself.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.