French Holocaust survivor wins Nobel Prize in chemistry

Soai, 76, is affiliated with the Tokyo University of Science. After being notified he had won, he told the Nobel Prize press conference over the phone it was “the most exciting day in my life, I am very glad to share this prize with professor Henri Kagan”.

Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a press release that this year’s prize “is about foundational chemistry”, with Kagan and Soai having “provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously”.

Henri Kagan[Missing Credit]

The pair showed how chemical reactions can be shaped to selectively produce one of two mirror-image versions of a molecule.

Their work potentially sheds light on why life on Earth predominantly uses one version rather than the other.

When designing drugs to treat diseases, scientists want to select which mirror-image of a molecule they are manufacturing – they want the version that will treat an illness, not make symptoms worse.

Awarded by the Nobel Foundation based on the principle of “for the greatest benefit to humankind”, Nobel Prizes in six categories – chemistry, physics, physiology, medicine, literature, and peace – are given out each year since 1901.

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2025, 220 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22 per cent of all recipients despite Jews constituting 0.2 per cent of the world’s population.