The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on October 7 to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai for their work on non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
Their discoveries address a chemical puzzle more than a century old: why molecules of life exist predominantly in one of two mirror-image forms. Soai's autocatalytic reaction showed how a tiny imbalance can amplify itself, while Kagan described non-linear effects in asymmetric catalysis.
The work matters for drug manufacturing, where the wrong mirror-image form of a molecule can be ineffective or harmful. Last year's prize went to Kitagawa, Yaghi and Robson for metal-organic frameworks.