Christian de Duve's voluntary passing away on 4 May 2013 could be seen as the momentous contribution of an eminent biologist and Nobel laureate to the discussion about ‘last things’. In contrast to his fellow scientists Ludwig Boltzmann and Allan Turing, who had made a deliberate choice to end their life in a state of depression and despair, de Duve “left with a smile and a good‐bye”, as his daughter told a newspaper. What is the value and meaning of life? Is death inevitable? Should dying with dignity become an inalienable human right? Theologians, philosophers, doctors, politicians, sociologists and jurists have all offered their answers to these fundamental questions. The participation of biologists in the discussion is long overdue and should, in fact, dominate the discourse. We can start from de Duve's premise—expressed as a subtitle of his book Cosmic Dust —that life is a cosmic imperative; a phenomenon that inevitably takes place anywhere in the universe as permitted by appropriate physicochemical conditions. Under such conditions, the second law of thermodynamics rules—prebiotic organic syntheses proceed, matter …