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Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on mirror-image molecules

The Guardian Science · 7 October 2026 at 14:36

Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on mirror-image molecules

Henri B Kagan and Kensō Soai awarded prize for discovery that has aided understanding of how medicines work in the body The Nobel prize in chemistry 2026 has been awarded to two scientists for discoveries that showed how chemical reactions can produce an overwhelming excess of one of two mirror image forms of a molecule.

Henri B Kagan at Paris-Sud University in France and Kensō Soai at Tokyo University of Science in Japan have been awarded the prize “for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”.

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Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on mirror-image molecules

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