The winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry have been announced.

Axar.az reports that the prize has been awarded to Henri B. Kagan (Université Paris-Sud, France) and Kenso Soai (Tokyo University of Science, Japan) for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.

Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist as two variants that are each other’s mirror image. However, living organisms only contain one of these mirror images. How chemical asymmetry such as this could have emerged was long a mystery to chemists. Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 for discovering a solution to this puzzle.