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Nature 405, 895-896 (22 June 2000) | doi:10.1038/35016183

Open Innovation Challenges

Chemistry: Chirality, magnetism and light

Laurence D. Barron

A tortuous quest involving physicists, chemists and biologists that has endured for over 150 years has finally ended with a paper by Rikken and Raupach1 on page 932 of this issue. They report the first unequivocal use of a static magnetic field to bias a chemical process in favour of one of two mirror-image products (left- or right-handed enantiomers).