Mexico

Mexico, October 8, 2026. The Mexican press reports on the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Frenchman Henri Kagan and Japanese Kenso Soai. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced it on Wednesday, October 7, "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis," according to El Informador.

The Mexican account is primarily educational. Vanguardia and El Informador explain that certain molecules, such as amino acids, exist in two variants that are mirror images of each other, like a right hand and a left hand, while living beings only contain one of them. This property, homochirality, had long remained unexplained: when researchers triggered a reaction that could form both versions, they obtained equal quantities in their test tubes.

El Informador then details the contribution of each. Kagan took a decisive first step in 1986, finding a way to manipulate reactions that produce a greater excess than expected of one of the two forms. Vanguardia places Kagan at the University of Paris-Sud, in France, and Soai at the University of Science in Tokyo, Japan.

The Reforma dispatch, picked up by El Norte from Stockholm, gets to the point: the two laureates have solved a long-standing enigma, how to form a single mirror-image molecular form, which has "enormous importance" for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products. El Informador adds that, for molecules intended to interact with living organisms, such as medicines, only one of the two forms has the desired effect.

The coverage emphasizes practical usefulness over the individuals. According to El Informador, the work has given chemists new fundamental tools for their daily work. Vanguardia mentions applications in the design of molecules used, in particular, by the pharmaceutical industry. The articles consulted do not develop the age of the laureates, the political reaction in France or Japan, or the endowment of the prize.