2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors research on mirror molecules

The 2026 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Kagan of the Universite Paris-Sud, in France, and Kenso Soai of the Tokyo University of Science, in Japan, for their work exploring the fundamental geometry of molecules.

The pair are known for pioneering research into autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Molecules that are chiral are those whose mirror images cannot be superimposed on one another. Kagan and Soai figured out, for the first time, a way to create just one of those mirror images.

Chirality is fundamental to understanding organic chemistry. Amino acids and sugars are chiral, for example, in that these molecules all share the same 3D spatial orientation, a property also known as handedness. Imagine your right and left hands—they are mirror images of one another, and you cannot superimpose one on the other. Most people favor one or the other hand—homochirality is similar. Amino acids are all left-handed; sugars are right-handed.

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One of the most famous ways humans interact with chirality every day has to do with the senses: reversing the chirality of the molecule lemonene from right handed to left-handed can change our perception from smelling an orange to smelling a lemon.

Soai on Wednesday after finding out he had won the prize, told the Nobel Committee that he had been out shopping when he was notified he had won, saying it's "one of the most exciting days of my life. I'm very glad to share the prize with Professor Henri Kagan."

He noted that chirality in amino acids is essential to the formation of DNA, and therefore to life as we know it, and many mysteries remain as to how it first emerged. "This is not the final answer," Soai said. "This field should be (moved) forward more and more to understand life."

Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee, said after the announcement that "taken together, the groundbreaking discoveries by Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have reshaped our understanding of molecular chirality, how it is created, amplified and transmitted."

Kagan and Soai showed that it is possible to increase the ratio of one mirror image compared to the other. They also showed that it is possible to create one of the mirror images “from nothing,” as Somfai said, using autocatalysis, which is a chemical process where one product of the reaction acts as its catalyst, speeding up the reaction.

The discovery could be the key to understanding how life first arose on Earth, Somfai said.

The work has also been integral to the pharmaceutical industry and the development of novel molecules. Somfai noted that it is "difficult to say that this drug or that drug was developed using this. I would say all of them, because we use this as a tool."

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded 117 times, to 198 laureates in total, since its inception in 1901. That year, the winner was Dutch physical chemist Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff for his work uncovering how chemicals interact with each other in solutions.

Among the prize’s most famous laureates is Marie Curie, who was the first woman to receive the award and the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes. Curie's initial Nobel was for physics, but the second, for chemistry in 1911, recognized her work on polonium and the isolation of pure radium.

Another notable dual winner was Frederick Sanger, who won in 1958 for sequencing the amino acids that make up insulin, and again in 1980 for developing a method to sequence strands DNA.

Other awards have recognized research into nanoparticles that can produce a stunning array of colors called quantum dots, the developers of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, and a way to make molecular sponges that may be used in everything from cancer treatments to cleaning wastewater.

Editor’s note (10/07/2026: This is a breaking news story and will be updated.