'25 years late': 95-year-old Kagan wins Nobel Chemistry Prize after 2001 snub

Kagan, excluded when asymmetric catalysis was honored in 2001, becomes third-oldest Nobel laureate; Japan claims its 10th Nobel Chemistry Prize as Soai shares award

The Nobel Committee on Wednesday (local time) named Henri B. Kagan, emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in France, and Soai Kenso, professor at Tokyo University of Science in Japan, as winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The photo shows Kagan attending an official meeting of the Academy of Sciences in 2009. [AP]

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Kagan, emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in France, and Soai Kenso, professor at Tokyo University of Science in Japan.

The Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday (local time) that the two scientists were selected for their discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. The committee said the laureates had provided answers to one of chemistry's enduring mysteries: the spontaneous emergence of "homochirality" — the phenomenon in which the molecules that make up living organisms adopt only one directional orientation.

Kagan, born in December 1930, is 95 years old. By age at the time of the award, he is the third-oldest Nobel laureate in history, behind John Goodenough, who received the Chemistry Prize in 2019, and Arthur Ashkin, who received the Physics Prize in 2018. Kagan is credited with bringing about a "revolutionary change" in chemistry in the 1980s, when he succeeded in asymmetric catalytic synthesis — precisely manipulating catalysts to produce a greater quantity of one mirror-image molecule over the other.

Many in the scientific community have long held that Kagan should have received the Nobel Prize as far back as 2001. That year, the Nobel Committee awarded the Chemistry Prize to Americans William S. Knowles and K. Barry Sharpless and Japan's Noyori Ryoji for research related to asymmetric catalysis — work in a field that Kagan had helped pioneer. His exclusion drew sharp criticism at the time, particularly from the French scientific community. France's then-Research Minister Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg went so far as to send a letter of protest to the chair of the Nobel Committee.

With Kagan's selection confirmed, the French newspaper Les Echos wrote that "the Nobel Prize arrived 25 years late for Henri Kagan." President Emmanuel Macron quickly posted on X, formerly Twitter, calling it "an immense source of pride for the nation" and adding, "Recognition befitting a lifetime of research. From Paris-Saclay to the Nobel — French science shines." The French Academy of Sciences welcomed the award on Facebook, saying the laureates' research "is particularly important for biochemistry and pharmaceutical production," and expressing "great pride that our member Kagan, elected in 1991, has received this exceptional honor."

The Nobel Committee said it had been unable to notify Kagan of the award in advance. Reuters reported that it could not reach Kagan directly and instead received a response through his daughter, Véronique Le Dünff. She told Reuters she was "very happy that the creativity and originality of my father's research opened new paths in the field."

With Soai's co-award, Japan has produced a Nobel Chemistry laureate for the second consecutive year, bringing its total to 10.

At a press conference held at Tokyo University of Science on Wednesday evening, Soai said he was "very happy that the significance and place of this research has been recognized through this award." He added that he intended to keep contributing to the field, saying he was certain "there are still interesting things out there that we don't yet know."

Earlier, in a call with the Nobel Committee, Soai had described Wednesday as "the most exciting day of my life."

Soai also said he was "very happy to be sharing this award with Professor Kagan," and expressed deep gratitude to his university colleagues and students, saying the discovery "would not have been possible without their efforts."

Asked about the moment he learned of the award, Soai said he had been out at a nearby supermarket buying groceries when the call came in. He laughed and added that, while it might sound a little presumptuous to say so himself, he had thought that even if he did win, "no one would complain" — a remark that spoke to the quiet confidence of a scholar who had devoted his life to his research.

On the research process itself, Soai said he could not claim it had been without difficulty, but that he had never thought of it as hard. "There was something moving about being able to keep discovering new things," he said. He added that at the time, he had been pressing on with his research without knowing whether the reactions he was aiming for would actually occur — "a feeling a bit like groping along a dark path."

Soai said he expected the study of chirality to expand into other fields beyond its current scope, and expressed hope that younger researchers would go on to achieve further results in the area.

kate01@heraldcorp.com