Japanese organic chemist Kenso Soai and French researcher Henri Kagan won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for their work to solve the chemical mystery surrounding mirror-image molecules, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Wednesday.
Soai, 76, is a professor emeritus at the Tokyo University of Science in Japan and Kagan, 95, is a professor emeritus at the Universite Paris-Sud in France.
"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," Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said.
Some molecules exist as two mirror-image forms, but living organisms predominantly use one of them, a phenomenon known as homochirality.
The two researchers helped find how chemical reactions leading to homochirality can be triggered.
The discovery of "non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis" has been "decisive" for chemists designing reactions for manufacturing pharmaceuticals, the academy said.
Soai's win marks the second consecutive year a Japanese national has won the chemistry prize, following Kyoto University's Susumu Kitagawa, who shared the 2025 award with two others for developing porous materials that can store and release gases.
"I'm very glad to share the prize with professor Henri Kagan," Soai said by phone at a press conference following the announcement.
The Hiroshima native said he was out shopping when he received a call from the Nobel committee and was pleased that their field of research had been "recognized."
People rejoiced at the news in Hiroshima, western Japan, and at his university in Tokyo where some students described it as "unexpected."
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi congratulated Soai over the phone, telling him that she was "proud" of his achievement as a fellow Japanese.
At a press conference at his university in Tokyo on Wednesday evening, Soai expressed his appreciation for Japan's chemistry community, attributing his success to the strong foundation it provided for his research.
He drew laughter by suggesting that, because his discovery relates to the very foundations of life, surely "no one would object to my winning the prize."
He said he hopes his win will spur greater interest in his field, even among those who are not familiar with it.
Before Soai published his discovery on "the first ever chemical reaction that had the potential to be homochiral" in 1995, Kagan laid the foundation nearly 10 years prior in 1986 by discovering a new way to manipulate chemical reactions.
The Boulogne-Billancourt native's discovery allowed him "to create a greater excess of one of the mirror images than had previously been thought possible," according to a press release by the Nobel Prize.
