India, Oct. 8 -- The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Henri B. Kagan (an emeritus professor at the Universite Paris-Sud in France) and Kenso Soai (a Japanese organic chemist, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Applied Chemistry at Tokyo University of Science) for the "discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."

Henri Kagan took the first decisive step in 1986, when he discovered a new way of manipulating chemical reactions. This allowed him to create a greater excess of one of the mirror images than had previously been thought possible.

Kenso Soai took the next step. In 1995, a key publica tion describes how he designed the first ever chemical reaction that had the potential to be...