"I am very excited to receive this good news. It is one of the most exciting days of my life," Kenso Soai says by phone from Hiroshima at the press conference in Stockholm.
I am very happy to share the award with Professor Kagan.
The prize is about so-called homochirality, which chemists call "the chemistry of life".
Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist in two versions that are mirror images of each other - much like right and left hands. But in living organisms, only one of the mirror images exists, and how this chemical asymmetry (homochirality) could arise spontaneously was long unknown. When chemists experimented, they were unable to produce just one of the mirror images.
Harmful effects
But in pharmaceutical manufacturing, for example, only one mirror image is desirable, as it has the intended effect. The other can have unnecessary and sometimes harmful side effects.
An example of how serious the effects of the wrong mirror-image molecule in a drug can be is the so-called Neurosedyn scandal in the 1960s, when thousands of children around the world were born with deformities.
Through their respective research, Kagan and Soai found the answer to the more than 100-year-old mystery surrounding mirror images.
Manipulated reactions
Kagan took the first crucial step when, in 1986, he discovered a way to manipulate chemical reactions to create larger excesses of one mirror image than had been thought possible.
In 1995, Soai took the next step, designing the first chemical reaction with the potential to become homochiral.
In 2003, he went all the way and presented a reaction in which he managed to create molecules in which only one of the mirror images was formed. In this way, he was able to explain homochirality for the first time.
We have discovered many interesting things about homochirality. I am delighted to receive the prize. It is recognition from the Nobel Committee for this area of research, says Kenso Soai, who emphasizes that “more research is needed to understand life.”
Professor Sara Linse, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Sweden’s national academy of sciences), says the research is used, among other things, in the pharmaceutical industry and in the manufacture of optical materials.
This is already being used today in the manufacture of asthma medications and antiviral substances.
Henri B. Kagan, born in 1930 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Professor emeritus at the then Université Paris-Sud, France.
Kenso Soai, born in 1950 in Hiroshima, Japan.
Professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Science, Japan.
They will receive the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."
The prize money, 12 million kronor (about $1.1 million), will be divided equally between the laureates.
