Chemistry Nobel goes to Kagan and Soai

STOCKHOLM, Oct 7: Scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving a long-standing riddle of asymmetric "mirror image" molecules, a discovery hugely important for pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award-giving body said on Wednesday.

Soai, 76, is Japanese, and Kagan, 95, is French, and their work built on a discovery by the 19th-century French chemist Louis Pasteur.

"This is the most exciting day in my life, I am very glad to share this prize with professor Henri Kagan," Soai said, speaking by phone to the Nobel Prize press conference, adding he had been out shopping when receiving the news. The Nobel committee was still trying to contact Kagan, the third-oldest person to be awarded a Nobel Prize, to inform him.

French President Emmanuel Macron congratulated the laureates on X, calling it an immense honour for the country. "A recognition suited to a lifetime of research," he said.

In fact, Kagan's work has long been seen as influential on the field and the then-French research minister complained to the Nobel Foundation in 2001 when Kagan was left out that year. The prize instead went to two ⁠American and one Japanese scientists for work in the same field.