What is your prediction for the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

It has already been announced: Japanese scientists have once again won the Nobel Prize. The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for their discoveries concerning nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Their work addresses a profoundly deep question: Why does the living world almost exclusively select one chirality? Many organic molecules exist as left- and right-handed forms—i.e., two mirror-image enantiomers. Ordinary chemical reactions typically produce both left- and right-handed forms equally, yet drugs and biomolecules often require only one. Kagan’s contribution lies in systematically revealing nonlinear effects in asymmetric catalysis: even a catalyst with only a slight chiral bias can yield products with dramatically amplified enantiopurity—not merely proportional to the catalyst’s initial bias. This demonstrates that chemical systems possess mechanisms whereby a minor initial advantage can be progressively amplified. Related research later became an essential tool for understanding the mechanistic foundations of asymmetric catalysis [1].

25 Years Late! The Nobel Prize in Chemistry Is Announced—95-Year-Old French Professor Finally Realizes His Dream

By Qiao Buchi, from Aofeishan QuantumBit | WeChat Official Account QbitAI Just now, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has officially been announced! The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared that this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Saclay (formerly Paris-Sud University) in France and Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science in Japan, in recognition of their discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Notably, 95-year-old French chemistry legend Professor Kagan had narrowly missed the Nobel Prize in 2001—an outcome that sparked widespread controversy in the scientific community. Now, after a 25-year wait, he has finally received his well-deserved Nobel Prize—eliciting tremendous excitement across the entire field of chemistry. The Nobel Committee’s official assessment is exceptionally high. Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, stated: “Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai solved a mystery that has puzzled chemists for over a century: How did life’s single-handedness arise spontaneously? The chemical reactions they developed are truly spectacular.” Why does life favor only one mirror-image molecule? What exactly did these two masters discover—enabling chemical molecules to ‘choose sides’ like living systems do? Why does nature pick just one hand? To understand the contributions of these two eminent scientists, we must first explore the most fascinating concept in chemistry: chirality. Hold out your left and right hands: they look identical, yet no matter how you rotate them, when palms face upward, your left hand can never perfectly overlap your right. This property—being mirror images yet non-superimposable—is termed chirality in chemistry. As early as the mid-19th century, Louis Pasteur—the founder of microbiology—discovered, while studying tartaric acid in wine, two molecular forms that were mirror images of each other—i.e., enantiomers—using a microscope. Even more astonishingly, life uses only one of these ‘hands.’ All amino acids constituting your proteins are exclusively left-handed; all sugars in DNA are exclusively right-handed. This phenomenon is called homochirality—derived from the Greek words for ‘same’ and ‘hand.’ This exclusive use of a single mirror-image form by living systems is known as homochirality. Which hand you choose can have serious consequences. The thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960s stands as the most painful lesson. This sedative caused birth defects in over ten thousand infants worldwide. Post-hoc analysis revealed that one enantiomer was therapeutically active, whereas its mirror-image counterpart caused the devastating harm. Thus, the pharmaceutical industry faces a strict requirement: when synthesizing chiral molecules, only one ‘hand’ should be produced—and the other must be minimized as much as possible. The problem, however, is that every time chemists synthesize chiral molecules in a test tube, they invariably obtain a 50:50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms. How to bias the reaction strongly—or even exclusively—toward one enantiomer has remained a central challenge perplexing chemists for over a century. In 1953, theoretical physicist Charles Frank proposed a famous mathematical model. He argued that achieving spontaneous emergence of single-handedness from an initially symmetric state requires three stringent conditions: 1. The reaction must be asymmetric and involve a chiral catalyst;

Kagan, Soai Win 2026 Chemistry Nobel for Advances in Asymmetric Synthesis

13 hours ago

The Royal Swedish Academy awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Kagan and Soai for breakthroughs in asymmetric synthesis. Their work enables precise control of molecular chirality, crucial for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and materials manufacturing.

chemweek

2026-10-08

Kagan, Soai Win 2026 Chemistry Nobel for Advances in Asymmetric Synthesis

Kagan, Soai Win 2026 Chemistry Nobel for Advances in Asymmetric Synthesis

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