Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for solving a longstanding 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.” Mr. Kagan, 95, is French and a professor emeritus at Université Paris-Sud in France. Mr. Soai was born in Hiroshima, Japan, and is a professor emeritus at the University of Science in Japan. 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? Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said their reactions were “spectacular” and solved a chemical mystery over a century old. Mr. Kagan took the first decisive step in 1986 by discovering a new way to manipulate chemical reactions to create a greater excess of one mirror image. Mr. Soai designed the first ever chemical reaction with the potential to be homochiral, succeeding in 2003.
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