Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research into molecules' mirror images, “decisive for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said on Wednesday.
The French and Japanese researchers were awarded for the discovery ofnon-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Many molecules, such as amino acids, have two mirror versions of themselves, but only one version of them is found in living organisms; this is known as chemical asymmetry.
