Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on mirror-image molecules

By Matthew Addicoat, Senior Lecturer in Functional Materials, Nottingham Trent University

The 2026 Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to two researchers for their work on mirror-image molecules.

Frances’s Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kensō Soai were announced as this year’s winners during a news conference in Stockholm.

Some molecules, like amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in living beings, exist in two forms that are each other’s mirror-image – like our left and right hands. Molecules that are mirror-image in this way are described as chiral, which…

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