Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai win Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Henri B Kagan and Kenso Soai just took home the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for cracking a big mystery: why living things use only one "hand" of amino acids, even though nature makes both.
Their discovery about homochirality could help scientists design safer, more effective medicines with fewer side effects.
Homochirality discovery shaping drug design
Kagan found that even an impure catalysts can lead to super-pure results, a breakthrough for making precise molecules.
Soai built on this with a clever reaction where the product helps make more of itself, leading to consistently single-handed molecules by 2003.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said, "Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular," and it's already shaping how new drugs are made today.