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Daily briefing: Chemistry Nobel goes to mirror-molecule researchers
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The winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Henri Kagan (left) and Kenso Soai, were announced on 7 October.Credit: Académie des sciences, Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty
Chemists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on a long-standing mystery: how can living organisms create molecules that are just one of two possible mirror-image variants? In the 1980s, Kagan showed how catalysts can amplify a small asymmetry in handedness. And in the 1990s, Soai demonstrated that a one-handed molecule, produced in a reaction, can become its own catalyst, driving even greater asymmetry. Together they provided clues as to how natural reactions in living organisms might overwhelmingly produce just one type of mirror-image molecule.
I watched today’s chemistry prize announcement with a bevy of colleagues from the Nature chemistry journals, and the consensus in that room was that the winning work was a surprise, but a good one. Across the chemosphere, there was a lot of appreciation for the fact that we don’t have to debate, this year, if the work was ‘really biology, rather than chemistry’. And I heard several admiring mentions of chemist Donna Blackmond. Her work explores the mechanistic details of asymmetric organic catalysis and many thought she would also have been a worthy winner. And of course we were all delighted that Kenso Soai’s seminal 1995 paper, on what’s today known as the Soai reaction, was published in Nature (especially after seeing our beloved rival Science get a special mention in yesterday’s physics prize announcement).
Watch me talk to Nature Podcast host Benjamin Thompson about the prize in a video sneak preview of the podcast (the full episode is out in a couple of hours — get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Music, or use the RSS feed.).
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