Lucknow: The announcement of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has brought back a flood of memories for Lucknow-based scientist and chemistry professor S P Singh, who fondly recalls a personal encounter with French chemist Henri B Kagan more than five decades ago.“It’s good that you are going back to India and will work for your country,” Singh remembers Kagan telling him in 1970, words that, he says, have stayed with him ever since.At the time, Singh was conducting research at the University of Illinois in Chicago. As he prepared to return to India after completing his postdoctoral work, his research supervisor, Jacques Kagan, younger brother of Henri Kagan, urged him to visit Paris before leaving the United States.“I had developed a close bond with my supervisor and adjusted my travel plans accordingly,” Singh said.The visit turned into a memorable family experience. Singh (32) was travelling with his wife, Prabha Singh, and their young child when Henri Kagan personally received them at the airport and hosted them during their stay.“It was Aug 1970, the peak tourist season in Europe. Henri said most French people left Paris at that time because of the rush of visitors, but he had stayed back for us,” Singh recalled.A former student of Lucknow University, Singh earned his PhD in chemistry in 1964 before moving to Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow and Senior Fulbright Scholar. He went on to build a distinguished academic career, publishing over 200 research papers and reviews. Though he retired in 1998, he continues to be associated with academia as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry at Kurukshetra University.“The Nobel announcement revived memories of a scientist whose work has now received one of the world’s highest scientific honours,” Singh said.Kagan, now 95 and a professor emeritus at Université Paris-Saclay, shared the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Japanese chemist Kenso Soai for pioneering work on nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.Explaining the significance of their discoveries, Singh compared molecular structures to human hands.“Your left and right hands look alike but are mirror images of each other. Molecules can behave in the same way,” he said.According to Singh, some molecules exist in mirror-image forms that contain the same atoms but can behave differently in biological systems. This distinction is particularly important in pharmaceuticals, where one form may produce the desired therapeutic effect while the other may be less effective or act differently.Singh said Kagan’s work demonstrated how a small imbalance between mirror-image molecular forms could be amplified during chemical reactions. Soai later showed how certain reactions could accelerate themselves through a process known as autocatalysis. Together, the discoveries provided deeper insights into how one molecular form can become dominant.“These findings help chemists produce medicines more precisely and may also offer clues to one of science’s biggest questions: why life on Earth favours particular molecular forms,” Singh said.Singh himself has received several honours, including the New Millennium Plaque of Honour at the Indian Science Congress in 2014 for his contributions to chemistry.
