Nobel Chemistry 2026: How Kagan, Soai solved century-old 'mirror-image' mystery
Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving the mystery of homochirality. Their work explains why biological life favors one-handed molecules and provides methods to produce single-handed pharmaceuticals to prevent harmful side effects.
Why it matters
This discovery is critical for pharmaceutical safety, as it allows for the production of drugs that avoid the toxic side effects caused by incorrect mirror-image molecular structures.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2026 has been awarded to France's Henri B Kagan and Japan's Kenso Soai. The scientists solved more than a century-old puzzle about why living organisms are made of one type of amino acids despite the existence of two similar mirror types in nature, and how a single type could be artificially produced so that the pharmaceuticals made from them do not exhibit harmful side effects on the human body.If we hold up our hands. they are mirror images of each other, yet no matter how you turn them, you cannot lay one perfectly over the other. Many molecules share this property.
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