Nobel Prize for Figuring Out Nature's Left and Right

Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud and Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, announced 7 October 2026 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It honors Kagan's 1986 finding that tiny left-right imbalances can grow large, and Soai's 1995-2003 reaction where molecules copy themselves to favor one mirror form.