Chemistry Nobel goes to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai
Event Brief generated 30 s read
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The short version
- Henri B. Kagan, 95, and Kenso Soai, 76, won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- The prize recognises work on chirality and asymmetric synthesis.
- They share 12 million Swedish kronor, about $1.2 million.
What happened
Chiral molecules come in left- and right-handed versions that can behave very differently in the body. Asymmetric synthesis is the craft of making mostly one hand, which matters for producing medicines safely.
Why it might matter
Much of modern drug manufacturing depends on making the correct mirror-image form of a molecule.
What we don’t know yet
The sweep did not include the Nobel committee’s own scientific background document.
