Kacser's achievements have been recognised by his election to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1990, by an honorary doctorate of the University of Bordeaux II in 1993.

Kacser's work falls into four distinct categories: 1. building a foundation in physical chemistry; 2. development of metabolic control analysis; 3. consolidation and 4. expansion.

Only in the third phase of his career his expertise in genetics came to light when he set out to find experimental models to demonstrate the correctness of his paper on metabolic control analysis.

They showed that the expectation that a metabolic pathway will be controlled by a single pacemaker reaction is a fallacy, and most of the experimental criteria used in the supposed identification of such steps are misleading.

Biochemical interest in the ideas expressed in "The control of flux" started to grow in the 1980s, particularly with its experimental applications in Amsterdam to oxidative phosphorylation,[13] urea synthesis and gluconeogenesis.

[14] At this time, because the theory of Kacser and Burns and the simultaneous but independent work carried out by Reinhart Heinrich and Tom Rapoport in Berlin were compatible,[15] a common terminology and set of symbols was agreed for the new field of Metabolic Control Analysis.

At the time of his death, Henrik still ran an active laboratory, had two large grants supporting his work and continued to produce original scientific ideas.