India, Oct. 7 -- Henri B Kagan and Kenso Soai have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving one of chemistry's most intriguing puzzles: how can a chemical reaction produce mostly one of two mirror-image versions of a molecule?

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the prize recognises their discoveries of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. In simple terms, Kagan found a way to make a chemical reaction favour one mirror-image molecule much more strongly than expected, while Soai showed how a molecule could help make more copies of itself, allowing one version to take over a reaction.

Their discoveries are important because molecules with the same atoms can sometimes exist in two f...