DOMINANT ANGLE
Buenos Aires is deciphering this Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its practical scope: from mirror molecules at the origin of life to more precise medications, with thalidomide as an example.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
Henri Kagan (France, 95 years old) and Kenso Soai (Japan, born in Hiroshima in 1950) receive the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis" (Perfil).
- 02
La Nación illustrates the issue with thalidomide, effective against pregnancy nausea in one form and causing malformations in the other, and with levodopa against Parkinson's.
- 03
Perfil indicates that the $1.2 million prize will be shared and that the homochirality of living organisms had remained an open question for over a century.
ANALYSIS
Buenos Aires, October 8, 2026. The Argentine press dedicates more explanatory work than national celebration to the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded on Wednesday, October 7. Perfil and La Nación start with the same image: the right hand and the left hand, almost identical but not superimposable. Perfil transposes this to molecules, which exist "in two versions that are mirror images of each other", a difference "fundamental for the chemistry of living beings" and for manufacturing medicines, fragrances, and agrochemicals.
The Frenchman Henri Kagan and the Japanese Kenso Soai are distinguished by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis". Perfil specifies that the two laureates will share a prize of $1.2 million. The newspaper emphasizes the notion of chirality and the homochirality of living things: proteins are built with amino acids of a certain orientation, DNA with sugars of the opposite configuration. This preference has raised the question of its spontaneous appearance for over a century, while in the laboratory reactions produce the two forms in similar proportions.
La Nación headlines "the mystery that won the Nobel" and presents the two researchers as having solved "an enigma that puzzled chemists for over a century". Its angle is clearly health-related: a molecule can heal and its mirror image can harm. The most well-known case is thalidomide, effective against pregnancy nausea in one form, and causing birth defects in babies in the other. The newspaper adds the example of levodopa, used against Parkinson's disease, while dextrodopa is biologically inactive.
The human story is told through an anecdote: when asked where the Academy's call surprised him, Kenso Soai, born in Hiroshima in 1950, replies "I was shopping". An ordinary day that became, he says, the "most exciting of his life". Henri Kagan is presented as the 95-year-old Frenchman. The two articles do not mention, in the available passages, any French political reaction or debate about the fact that he was not selected in 2001.
For Argentine readers, the prize is thus presented as a key to understanding the pharmaceutical industry and perfumery, and as a partial answer to the question of the origin of life, more than as a prestigious event for France or Japan.
