A life in context
The person behind the prize
Soai earned his doctorate at the University of Tokyo in 1979 and became a professor at Tokyo University of Science. He investigated reactions whose products help make more of themselves.
The contribution
He developed asymmetric autocatalysis that amplifies a small initial imbalance into a large excess of one mirror-image product.
The idea in plain language
Some molecules come in forms like left and right hands: the same parts, arranged as mirror images. Their interactions with living systems can differ.
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