Stockholm, Oct. 7 -- French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese chemist Kenso Soai have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering discoveries that helped explain how chemical reactions can favour and amplify one mirror-image form of a molecule over another.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award on Wednesday, honouring Kagan and Soai "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."

Their discoveries address one of chemistry's long-standing mysteries involving chirality, or molecular "handedness."

Many molecules can exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, much like a person's left and right hands. Although the two forms may appear almost ...