France’s Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai on Wednesday won the Nobel chemistry prize for solving the mystery of why only one version of some molecules’ mirror-image forms appears in nature, a discovery decisive for the development of pharmaceuticals.
The pair were honored “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis,” the jury said.
Like hands, all amino acids exist as two mirrored variants, but only one of them is found in the proteins in the body’s cells.
The other is rarely found in nature, a phenomenon known as “homochirality,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained.
Chemists have long wondered how that process occurs, and the two Nobel laureates’ discoveries have “enabled chemists to drive chemical reactions that lead to homochirality,” the jury said.
“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
“Their discoveries have been decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals,” the jury said.
Last year, the chemistry prize went to Japan’s Susumu Kitagawa, UK-born Richard Robson and American-Jordanian Omar Yaghi for developing a method of designing molecular structures.
The chemistry prize follows the physics prize, which on Tuesday honored Belgian physicist Francis Halzen for groundbreaking work using Antarctic ice to capture particles originating in the distant cosmos.
On Monday, the medicine prize was awarded to US psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Deisseroth and German scientists Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel.
The literature laureate will be revealed on Thursday, with some pundits suggesting that the Swedish Academy could follow up last year’s award to Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai with a prize for a woman writer, possibly from Latin America.
The most keenly anticipated award -- the peace prize -- is due on Friday.
US President Donald Trump lobbied intensively last year to get the prize and the committee is aware he will be watching closely again.
The economics prize wraps up the Nobel season on October 12.
The Nobel consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1.2-million prize sum, which is shared if there is more than one winner in a discipline.
The laureates will receive their prizes at a formal ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of scientist Alfred Nobel, who created the prizes in his will.
