Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to two scientists who showed how chemistry can pick one hand

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.” In plain words from the release: a reaction can amplify a small imbalance, and a molecule can help make more of itself, until one mirror form crowds out the other.

Chemists call life’s one-sided chemistry homochiral, from the Greek words for “same” and “hand.” Amino acids, the pieces proteins are built from, come in two mirror forms. Only one of them is found in the proteins in your cells. Drugmakers care because, when a molecule meets a living body, often only one mirror form of a medicine has the effect they want.

Kagan “took the first decisive step in 1986,” the academy says, finding a way to get a bigger excess of one mirror form than anyone had thought possible. In 1995 a key paper described how Soai designed the first reaction that could, in principle, make only one form. In 2003 he showed a reaction in which only one of the two forms was made. “Other than life itself, no one had previously achieved this feat.”

Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: “The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”

Kagan earned his doctorate in 1960 at the Collège de France. He is professor emeritus at the then Université Paris-Sud. Soai earned his doctorate in 1979 at the University of Tokyo. He is professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Science. The prize is 12 million Swedish kronor, shared equally. Each facts page lists the prize share as 1/2.