Henri Boris Kagan (born 15 December 1930) is a French chemist. He is currently an emeritus professor at the Université Paris-Saclay in France. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of asymmetric catalysis. His discoveries have had far-reaching impacts on the pharmaceutical industry. In 2026, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kensō Soai "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."
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Life and career
Born to a Jewish family who survived World War Two by hiding in the south of France under assumed names, he graduated from the Sorbonne and École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris and carried out his PhD under J. Jacques at the Collège de France. Subsequently, he was a research associate with A. Horeau. He then moved to Université Paris-Sud, Orsay where he is emeritus professor. A landmark in his research was the development of C2-symmetric ligands, e.g., DIOP for asymmetric catalysis. This discovery led to the discovery of many related ligands that support catalysts used in a variety of practical applications.
In 1986, Kagan observed the first examples of nonlinear effects in asymmetric catalysis and developed mathematical models to describe the behavior of such catalysts. This was a major discovery, making non-linear effects a field of chemistry in its own right: not only are they a tool for understanding molecular mechanisms, but they are also discussed in the context of the origin of life (asymmetric amplification). This is the work for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Honors and awards
Kagan is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and has won many awards in the field including: Silver Medal of the French National Scientific Research Center, Prelog Medal, August-Wihelm-von Hoffman Medal, Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry, Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, Wolf Prize in Chemistry, Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, JSPS Award for Eminent Scientists, Ryoji Noyori Prize, and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal.
Nobel Prize controversy
In 2001, there was some controversy when Kagan was not awarded the Nobel Prize that year, which had been shared by K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, Ryōji Noyori of Nagoya University, Japan, and William S. Knowles, formerly of Monsanto Company in St Louis, Missouri, for work on catalytic asymmetric synthesis. The French minister for science, Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg, thought that Kagan, as a pioneer of the field, should also have been honoured. However, the prize can be given to a maximum of three people.