Kagan, Soai win Nobel Prize in chemistry for mirror image chemistry
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 to Henri B Kagan and Kenso Soai for discovering how to make chemistry choose a single mirror image on Tuesday.
Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist as two variants that are mirror images of each other, yet living organisms contain only one of these variants. How such chemical asymmetry could emerge long remained a mystery to chemists, and the Academy honored Kagan and Soai for discovering the solution to this puzzle.
Chemists refer to life’s chemistry as homochiral, originating from the Greek words for “same” and “hand”. Similar to human hands, all amino acids exist as two mirrored variants, but cellular proteins contain only one variant while nature rarely contains the other.
Chemists long questioned how homochirality can emerge, as early experiments with chemical reactions forming mirrored molecules consistently produced equal proportions of both variants in test tubes.
However, researchers strived to produce only one mirror image because only one variant produces the desired effect when developing molecules that interact with living beings, such as pharmaceuticals.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 recognizes discoveries that enabled chemists to drive chemical reactions leading to homochirality.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said, “Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”
Kagan took the first decisive step in 1986 when he discovered a new method of manipulating chemical reactions, allowing him to create a greater excess of one mirror image than experts previously thought possible.
Soai took the next step, authoring a key 1995 publication that described how he designed the first chemical reaction with the potential to be homochiral. In 2003, he succeeded by presenting a reaction in which only one of the two possible mirror images formed.
Other than life itself, no one had previously achieved this accomplishment.
