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Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai win Nobel Prize in chemistry
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Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai win the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, says in a news release. “The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”
The duo’s discoveries, the news release says, “have been decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.”
Kagan, born in France, is affiliated with Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Soai, 95 years old and born in Japan, with the Tokyo University of Science.
The so-called “Soai reaction” is named for the scientist’s experiment.
According to online obituaries for his siblings, the Kagan family hid in a village in the south of France under assumed names during World War II.
The Times of Israel Community.