The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai for their work on nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.

The Nobel Committee noted that their research addressed a long-standing question about how homochirality can arise spontaneously. Committee Chair Heiner Linke described the reactions as remarkable.

In 1986, Kagan identified a new approach to steering chemical reactions that allows one mirror-image form to come to dominate far beyond prior expectations.

Soai contributed subsequent milestones: a 1995 publication unveiling the first chemical reaction with the potential to generate homochiral products, and a 2003 achievement in which a reaction yielded only one of the two mirror-image forms.