A French and a Japanese scientist won the 2026 Nobel Prize in chemistry for discoveries that have been important in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
Henri B Kagan and Kenso Soai will share a 12 million-krona ($1.2 million) award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said in a statement on Wednesday.
Their work helped lay the scientific foundations for asymmetric synthesis, a central technique in modern pharmaceutical chemistry. It allows drugmakers to selectively produce the desired mirror-image form of a molecule with a therapeutic effect instead of making the other one that can cause unnecessary and sometimes harmful side effects.
An example of where the active substance’s mirror image caused harm was the thalidomide scandal in the early 1960s. Thousands of children were affected by birth defects caused by the drug, used as a sedative and morning-sickness remedy.
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Kagan (95), is affiliated with what used to be called Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France. Soai, who was born in 1950, is professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Science.
“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in the statement. “The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”
Outside medicine, the optimised reaction can help companies that manufacture “substances that are intended to interact with living beings, such as pharmaceuticals, flavours, scents and agricultural chemicals,” the committee said, adding that it can also be used to produce new materials.
The Nobels are annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace and have arguably become the world’s most prestigious science awards.
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The five prizes were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
The prize money this year was increased by 1 million kronor per category in connection with the 125th anniversary of the awards.
The laureates are announced until October 12th in Stockholm, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, whose recipients are unveiled on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. – Bloomberg
