Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai share the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering how to make a chemical reaction favour one mirror-image molecule over its twin — a problem that had puzzled chemists since the 19th century.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be shared by Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud in France and Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science in Japan, honouring work that explains one of chemistry’s oldest unsolved riddles: why living things are built almost entirely from one version of certain molecules, when chemistry itself has no obvious reason to prefer it.

The Academy cited the pair “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”

2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The Mystery of Left and Right

The puzzle at the heart of the prize concerns a property chemists call chirality. Many molecules essential to life — amino acids among them — exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, much like a person’s left and right hands. The two versions contain exactly the same atoms, arranged in exactly the same way, except reversed. Yet biology is overwhelmingly one-handed: proteins in the human body are built almost exclusively from a single mirror-image form of amino acids, a property scientists call homochirality, from the Greek words for “same” and “hand.” Its mirror twin is almost absent from nature.

For most of the history of chemistry, that imbalance was impossible to reproduce in a laboratory. When chemists ran reactions designed to create chiral molecules, they got a near-perfect fifty-fifty mixture of both mirror forms every time — a far cry from the near-total one-sidedness found in living cells. That gap mattered well beyond academic curiosity: in medicine, where a drug’s two mirror-image forms can behave completely differently in the body, only one version typically produces the intended therapeutic effect, while the other can be useless or, in some cases, harmful. Producing a single mirror image cleanly, rather than a mixture, became one of the central technical challenges in modern pharmaceutical chemistry.

Kagan and Soai, working years apart, each supplied a piece of the solution.

In 1986, Kagan discovered a new way of steering asymmetric chemical reactions that allowed chemists to generate a far greater excess of one mirror-image molecule than had previously seemed achievable — a technique that reshaped how chemists thought about controlling chirality in the lab.

Soai built on that foundation from a different angle. In a landmark 1995 paper, he described the first chemical reaction with the theoretical potential to become fully homochiral — one mirror image reinforcing its own production through autocatalysis, a process in which a reaction’s product accelerates further reactions of the same kind. It took him until 2003 to actually demonstrate it: a reaction that produced only one of the two possible mirror-image molecules, with none of the other detectable at all. Outside of biology itself, nobody had managed that before.

“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, announcing the award.

The Academy said the discoveries have become decisive tools for chemists designing the reactions used to manufacture pharmaceuticals, where isolating a single mirror-image compound, rather than settling for a mixture, can determine whether a drug works safely at all.

Kagan and Soai will share the prize sum, along with the gold medal and diploma traditionally presented at the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm in December.

Standing with teachers means more than celebrating them on World Teachers’ Day. It means giving them the support, professional autonomy and working conditions needed to shape India’s future.

Every year, World Teachers’ Day gives us a chance to speak about teachers. But 5 October 2026 is more than another day of appreciation. This year marks 60 years of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, and the theme, set by UNESCO with the ILO, UNICEF and Education International, is “Standing with teachers: 60 years of protecting the profession, advancing its status and shaping our futures.” Respect for teachers cannot remain a ceremonial idea. It must become a continuing social and educational responsibility.

Standing With Teachers in a Changing Education System

India has always given the teacher an important place. From the traditional gurukula system to the modern classroom, the teacher has been more than a person who delivers lessons. A teacher has been a guide, a mentor, a listener and, often, a source of confidence for a young person. The subjects taught in a classroom may be forgotten with time, but the encouragement received from a good teacher can last a lifetime.

The teacher’s role, however, is changing rapidly. Students today live in a world of smartphones, social media, artificial intelligence and unlimited digital information. A student can find an explanation for almost any question within seconds. This does not make the teacher less important. In many ways, it makes the teacher more important.

Information is not the same as knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Students need someone who can help them tell reliable information from misinformation, understand different points of view, ask meaningful questions and develop the confidence to think independently. Technology can provide information, but education also requires human understanding.

This is why the teacher of the future cannot be seen simply as a provider of content. The teacher must increasingly become a mentor and a facilitator of learning. Technology should remain a tool in the teacher’s hands, not a substitute for the teacher. Artificial intelligence can explain a concept, but it cannot fully understand the circumstances, emotions, aspirations and difficulties of every student in a classroom.

The human relationship between teacher and student remains at the heart of education.

India also needs to think seriously about the professional status of teachers. Respect should not be limited to Teachers’ Day speeches, greetings and awards. A profession is respected only when its practitioners receive adequate professional support, opportunities for continuous learning, reasonable working conditions and a meaningful voice in decisions that affect education.

UNESCO’s concept note for this year describes teacher status in three parts: symbolic, meaning how far teaching is valued; professional, meaning autonomy, support and a voice in policy; and material, meaning salaries, workloads and working conditions. It adds that the world needs 50 million more teachers by 2030 to meet the global education goal.

Teachers are expected to do much more than teach. They prepare lessons, assess students, maintain records, attend meetings and activities, communicate with parents and often respond to children’s social and emotional needs. These responsibilities require time, training and institutional support. The quality of education therefore depends not only on curriculum and infrastructure but also on the conditions in which teachers work.

Context matters too. Education in India takes place in very different social and geographical circumstances. A teacher in a major city and a teacher in a remote village face very different challenges, yet both are expected to prepare young people for an increasingly complex future.

Teachers in smaller towns and rural areas often become important links between school and community. They encourage children to continue their studies, guide families, identify students who need extra support and create opportunities where resources are limited. Their contribution deserves greater visibility.

Teachers also have a responsibility to preserve values while preparing students for change. Education should build employability and technological skills, but it should also cultivate honesty, compassion, discipline, respect for others and democratic values. An education system cannot be judged by examination results alone. It must also ask what kind of citizens its classrooms are producing.

World Teachers’ Day should therefore be a day of reflection, not only celebration.

The relationship between education and society is inseparable from the relationship between teachers and society. If we want responsible citizens, we must give teachers the freedom and support to nurture responsibility. If we want innovative young people, teachers must themselves be encouraged to experiment and learn. If we want inclusive classrooms, teachers must be supported in understanding different learning needs.

World Teachers’ Day should therefore be a day of reflection, not only celebration.

India has made significant progress in expanding access to education and embracing digital learning. The next challenge is to ensure that technology, policy and institutional reform strengthen the teacher rather than marginalise them. The teacher should remain at the centre of education even as its tools change.

The world also faces new challenges, including climate change, migration, social inequality and rapid technological transformation. UNESCO’s concept note for this year’s observance points to similar pressures on the profession, among them digital technologies and artificial intelligence, climate change, migration, conflict and displacement. Teachers are among those who must help young people understand and respond to them.

That responsibility cannot rest on teachers alone. Governments, educational institutions, parents, communities and society at large must stand with them.

A teacher may not always see the result of their work. A student may become a scientist, entrepreneur, farmer, civil servant, artist, engineer or teacher many years after leaving the classroom. Somewhere in that journey there may be a lesson, a word of encouragement or a moment of trust that came from a teacher.

That is the quiet power of teaching.

On World Teachers’ Day 2026, the question should not simply be, “How do we thank our teachers?” It should also be, “How do we create an environment in which teachers can do their best work?”

Standing with teachers means respecting their knowledge, listening to their experiences, supporting their professional growth and giving them the conditions they need to teach well.

The future of education will certainly involve new technologies. Classrooms will change and learning methods will evolve. But one thing should remain constant: the importance of a committed teacher who sees a student not merely as a mark or a data point, but as a human being with potential.

If we want to shape a better future, we must invest in those who help shape the people who will live in it.

A teacher nearing retirement leaves behind more than an empty classroom. Finding someone with the right subject knowledge, qualifications and willingness to work in the same school can be much harder than simply filling a vacant post. That challenge is becoming more common as education systems grow older with less youngsters joining the teacher workforce. In Lithuania, 42% of primary and secondary teachers were aged 55 or older in 2024. The share was 38% in both Latvia and Estonia, 37% in Portugal and 33% in Greece.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 38 countries that compares data and policies across areas including education, employment and the economy, is tracking this shift as part of a wider teacher recruitment problem.

Across OECD countries and partner economies, teachers aged 55 and above made up 23% of the teaching workforce in 2024, up from 20% in 2015. During the same period, the share of teachers under 35 fell from 23% to 22%. When experienced teachers retire, schools need qualified people ready to take their place. The problem is finding them is becoming difficult.

The Problem Bigger Than Empty Posts

A school can have a teacher shortage even when every classroom has someone standing in front of it. In 2024/25, 9.1% of primary and secondary teachers across OECD countries were not fully qualified. Around 4% of secondary teaching positions were unfilled at the beginning of the school year in both Latvia and Luxembourg.

The shortages are not spread evenly. Rural and remote schools, disadvantaged communities and subjects such as mathematics and natural sciences face particular difficulties in finding teachers. That makes an ageing workforce more complicated.

A teacher who retires from a mathematics classroom cannot simply be replaced by any available teacher. Schools need someone with the required subject knowledge and qualifications, and that person also has to be willing to work in that particular school or area.

Lithuania shows how these pressures can overlap. About 43% of its secondary teachers are already aged 55 or older. At the same time, its population aged 5 to 14 is projected to fall by 22% between 2024 and 2033. Fewer children may eventually mean fewer teachers are needed overall. But that does not guarantee that the teachers who remain will be in the right places or teach the subjects schools need

When Younger Teachers Leave?

There is another problem: bringing young people into teaching is only part of the challenge. Keeping them there matters too. Across countries and economies with available data, 6.4% of fully qualified primary and secondary teachers left the profession during the 2024/25 school year. Teachers with fewer than five years of experience accounted for more than one-third of resignations on average.

In some education systems, the share was much higher. Early-career teachers accounted for 77% of resignations in Israel, 69% in Austria, 66% in the French Community of Belgium and 64% in Luxembourg. The reasons vary. Workload, working conditions and the support available during the first years of teaching can influence whether new teachers remain in the profession.

And leaving a school does not always mean leaving education altogether. In Latvia, 12% of fully qualified teachers left the profession in 2024/25. But 37% of those who left moved into other jobs within the education sector. For schools, that still creates a recruitment problem. Experience may remain within education, but it is no longer necessarily available in the classroom where it is needed.

Fewer Children Do Not Solve the Shortage

There is a simple way to look at ageing populations: fewer children should eventually mean fewer teachers. The numbers show why that is not always enough. The population aged 5 to 14 across OECD countries is projected to decline by 9% between 2024 and 2033. Yet between 2015 and 2024, 17 of 40 countries with available data saw primary enrolment decline or remain broadly stable while their teaching workforce continued to grow.

Greece is a striking example. The number of primary students fell by about 12% between 2015 and 2024, but the number of primary teachers increased by 16%. The change was linked to decisions about class sizes, teachers’ working hours and instruction time. In other words, the number of children alone did not determine how many teachers schools needed.

The same issue appears at a local level. A village school may lose students but still need a mathematics teacher. A school serving a remote area cannot necessarily fill a vacancy simply because another school has surplus teachers. Where teachers are needed matters as much as how many are needed.

Teacher Workforce: The Indian Context

India’s teacher workforce is growing, but that does not mean teachers are available where they are needed. UDISE+ recorded 10.12 million teachers in 2024–25, up 6.7% from 2022–23. The national pupil-teacher ratio was 20:1 at primary level, 17:1 at upper primary, 15:1 at secondary and 23:1 at higher secondary.

State-level data tell a different story. NITI Aayog’s 2026 analysis recorded more than 2.08 lakh elementary teacher vacancies in Bihar, 80,341 in Jharkhand and 29,473 in Karnataka. India also had 1,04,125 single-teacher schools in 2024–25. Earlier UNESCO data cited by NITI Aayog showed that 89% of such schools were in rural areas. At secondary level, the national 15:1 ratio rose to 47:1 in Jharkhand and 37:1 in Maharashtra and Odisha.

This makes India’s missing age data significant. UDISE+ does not publish a nationally comparable share of teachers aged 55 and above. Without that information, it is difficult to estimate how many teachers are approaching retirement, which subjects and locations could lose experienced staff, or whether recruitment is keeping pace with potential exits.

The government has begun addressing the planning side of the problem. In July 2026, the Ministry of Education said states were being encouraged to use technology-based teacher requirement forecasting, while NITI Aayog has proposed a digital Human Resource Management Information System to track vacancies, transfers and postings. The four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme is intended to strengthen the supply of new teachers.

The missing link is workforce forecasting that connects these measures. India needs to know not only how many teachers are in its schools, but their age, subject and location, and how many are likely to retire in the years ahead. That would allow states to anticipate vacancies and recruit for specific schools and subjects before shortages become visible in classrooms.