The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai, naming henri kagan in a prize tied to a century-old question about molecular handedness. The decision points to work that the academy says solved a chemical mystery more than 100 years old.
Kenso Soai was on the phone with the Swedish Academy of Sciences while he was indulging in recreational consumerism, according to the live feed. Patrick Walter wrote that the laureates had provided “a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old.”
Homochirality and life
Walter also wrote that “Homochirality – the fact that life favours one handedness of molecules over another – has been a longstanding puzzle in chemistry running for over 100 years and one we’ve covered many times.” The source says molecules used by all life, such as amino acids, are chiral, and that chiral molecules have two enantiomers that are mirror images of one another.
Life is highly selective and works with one enantiomer, whether it is sugars or amino acids. That is the chemical problem the academy linked to the award, and the live feed connected the prize to questions about the origin of life.
Henri Kagan and 2001
Walter added a second complication around the award: “Apparently, Henri Kagan could – or should – have been on the 2001 chemistry Nobel prize for asymmetric catalysis.” The source says France’s then science minister wrote to the Nobel committee to complain about the omission.
The 2001 chemistry Nobel prize went to Barry Sharpless, Ryoji Noyori and William Knowles. By placing Kagan in that earlier dispute and then naming him now, the academy’s latest decision closes one gap while reopening the historical question of why this work waited until 2026.
Chemistry World said it would publish a news story and an explainer very soon. The unresolved detail is the exact work by Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai that solved the homochirality mystery, but the award itself leaves that mechanism at the center of the prize story.
