Biology is a science on life. This definition, concise and most commonly used, is satisfactory for almost everybody. It is otherwise when one asks: What is life? Then it appears that no one feature can be indicated which distinguishes “the living” from “the non-living.” The author presents the sources of these difficulties and then gives his own attempt to solve the problem of definition of live—which is based on the idea of levels of the biological organization. In author’s view, to characterise the objects of research in biology we should apply not one concept of life (or of living organism) but three concepts: of organized biological matter (for the molecular and sub-cellular levels), of living organism (for the level of the specimen), and of life (for the sphere of phenomena which occur on the population-species-biocenotic level).

On 7 April 1968 the Club of Rome was established. In 1972 D.H. Meadows, D.L. Meadows, J. Randers and W.W. Behrens published The Limits to Growth as the first report to the Club of Rome – describing various scenarios for world development to 2100. Since that time the Club of Rome has developed in the world wide apolitical movement.

The Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, one of the largest nonacademic biological research centres in Poland, celebrates its 100th anniversary. The Institute was established in 1918 by the Scientific Society of Warsaw. In 1945, after World War II, it was re-established in Łódź and in 1952 incorporated into the newly founded Polish Academy of Sciences. During the period of 1953–1955 a newly erected building at 3 Pasteur Street in Warsaw became the home of the Nencki Institute. Today, the Nencki Institute strives for excellence in basic research in the broad sense of biological sciences. Neurosciences and biological and molecular basic of civilization diseases represent two main research areas of the Institute in the context of the society needs to improve the quality of life. One of the strategic activities of the Institute is investments in bio- imaging.This has recently resulted in inclusion of the Institute in the EUROBIOIMAGING project of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). An excellent example of a synergy of basic and innovative studies is the Neurobiology Centre established at the Nencki Institute in 2010–2013 as part of a strategic project entitled the CePT. Additionally, the Nencki Institute trains nearly 200 PhD students under various programmes, including the H2020.