Nobel Prize in chemistry is awarded to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai
By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD
Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for solving a long-standing mystery about mirror images in molecules.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences called their discoveries “decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.”
Who are the winners?
Kagan, 95, is French and a professor emeritus at Université Paris-Sud in France.
Soai was born in Hiroshima, Japan, and is a professor emeritus at the University of Science in Japan.
Why did the committee say they received the prize?
The Nobel Committee credited the men with solving a “mystery” that had long puzzled scientists: How can some molecules, such as amino acids, exist as two variants that are each other’s mirror images while the proteins in living organisms are made from only one of those mirror images?
“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a statement.
“The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular,” he added.
Those helped solve the mystery of how that mirror property can spontaneously occur. Kagan took the “first decisive step in 1986,” the committee said, when he discovered a new way of manipulating chemical reactions that “allowed him to create a greater excess of one of the mirror images than had previously been thought possible.”
Soai took the next step, designing “the first ever chemical reaction that had the potential to be homochiral” — which he finally succeeded in doing in 2003, the committee added.
Who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2025?
The prize went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for the development of molecular building blocks with spaces large enough for gases and other chemicals to flow through them.
Who else has won a Nobel Prize this year?
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for their discovery of a transformative neuroscience tool that may one day lead to a treatment for blindness.
Francis Halzen was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for pioneering a telescope that paved the way for a new kind of astronomy.
When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?
The prize for chemistry was the third of six Nobel Prizes awarded this year. Each award recognizes groundbreaking contributions by an individual or organization in a specific field.
— The Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian novelist known for his dystopian themes and relentless prose, received the award.
— The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Last year, María Corina Machado, who built a powerful social movement in Venezuela challenging the nation’s authoritarian president, won the award.
— Next week, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Last year, Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt were honored for research explaining the relationship between technological progress and sustained economic growth.
All of the prize announcements are streamed live by the Nobel Prize organization at youtube.com/@NobelPrize.
