Holocaust survivor Henri Kagan, 95, wins Nobel Prize in chemistry for solving century-old mirror-molecule mystery

From the Newshound archive · first published 7 October 2026 · last updated 9 October 2026.

Henri Kagan, who as a child hid from the Nazis under a false name in a southern French village, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry aged 95, sharing the award with Japan's Kenso Soai. The pair are honoured for cracking a mystery over a century old: how to make chemical reactions produce just one of two mirror-image forms of a molecule. Their work underpins the way virtually every modern drug is now designed and manufactured. The Nobel Committee's Heiner Linke called the reactions they developed 'spectacular'.

The practical stakes are enormous — the thalidomide disaster of the 1960s, which left thousands of children disabled, resulted from the wrong mirror-image molecule reaching patients.

Soai, 76, said it was 'the most exciting day of my life' after being reached by the Nobel committee while shopping near his home in Tokyo.

Each laureate receives an equal share of 12 million Swedish kronor — around £900,000 — with medals presented by Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on 10 December.