Welcome to “A Century of Unifying Biology” – the 33rd General Assembly of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS)

It is my great pleasure to welcome to you Oslo July 30th through August 2nd where the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) holds its 33rd General Assembly – an event jointly organized by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (http://english.dnva.no/) and the University of Oslo (https://www.uio.no/english/). This marks the 100th anniversary of IUBS, an international scientific union encompassing all fields of biology: IUBS is unifying biology – hence the title of the 100th anniversary “A Century of Unifying Biology”.

One hundred years ago, no one could know that the 21 st century might become the century of biology – and this century will be the century of biology if we join forces across the many biological sub-disciplines from the classical biological fields of the very species-focused disciplines like zoology and botany to the modern technology-driven fields like genomics. Together we are much stronger in our pursuit to understand the living world than each dicipoine is by themselves; the field of biology has a well-developed theoretical foundation represented by the theory of evolution through natural selection, and today we can address and answer many questions earlier generations of biologists could only dream of answering. Today, we are better able than ever to understand how the ecological interactions between coexisting living organisms in a changing environment (be it biologically or physically) leads to evolution, which leads to changing ecological interactions between the coexisting living organisms. We can today do this by following in time the genetic and morphological (in a very broad sense) histories of the coexisting organisms.

At the 33rd General Assembly of IUBS in Oslo July 30th though August 2nd there will be parallel sessions on various IUBS scientific activities, staring with plenary sessions focusing on “A Century of Unifying Biology”, commencing with reflections on how Charles Darwin has laid the foundation of modern biology, and how we today are able to answer the key what, how, and why questions of biology (be it us human and other living organisms).

The insights that we, biologists, have acquired over the years are of key importance for policy- and decision-makers. Hence, communicating what we biologists know about ourselves as biological organisms and about the environment we are part of—our biological knowledge—is of critical importance. Thus, there will be sessions on science policy, including a reception where we will be meeting local politicians of Oslo City (currently the European Green Capital 20191 ).

You are all most welcome to Oslo and the 33rd General Assembly of IUBS focusing on our joint effort towards a unified biology – which has produced important insights for the field of biology with repercussions that extend well beyond our own field, that continuously improve our understanding of ourselves and the environment we are part of and indeed depend on for the future.

Oslo 01.06.19

Nils Chr. Stenseth

Organizer of the “A Century of Unifying Biology” – the 33rd General Assembly of IUBS