On Monday, September 7, 2026, Dr. Rosanne Hertzberger—microbiologist, author, former Member of Parliament, and founder of the Crispatus Foundation—will give a lecture titled “The Unity of Life on Earth.”

In it, she argues that life on Earth is characterized by a remarkable uniformity. Exactly one hundred years ago, the Delft microbiologists Kluyver and Donker described this unity in their essay *Die Einheit in der Biochemie*. Almost a century earlier, Gerrit Jan Mulder—one of the illustrious members of our Society—demonstrated that the same proteins are found in both plant and animal tissue. Drawing on their work, Hertzberger shows that all life shares the same building blocks, the same genetic programming language, and the same form of energy.