Unanimously, the member assembly decided that the emerita Professor Dr. Ulla Bonas will become new honorary member of the German Society for Plant Sciences (DBG). Proposed by DBG’s board, our president Professor Dr. Andreas Weber and honorary member Prof. Dr. Birgit Piechulla conveyed the news to Bonas, professor for Plant Genetics at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, since she unfortunately was unable to participate at our International Conference of the German Society for Plant Sciences. Our honorary member Professor Dr. Regine Kahmann summarizes in the laudation how Professor Bonas has made exceptional scientific discoveries. For example, her group was able to crack the recognition code of the newly discovered DNA binding domain in TAL effector proteins. The modular architecture of the proteins enabled the design and construction of artificial DNA-binding proteins with new specificities, which led to TALENs (Transcription activator-like effector nucleases). This was a major breakthrough to inactivate genes in eukaryotic genomes. The technological advancement cannot be underestimated and deserves the greatest recognition. TALENs would still be used today if the more-easy-to-use CRISPR Cas9-based gene editing system would not have been invented. Moreover, Bonas and her group gained major insights into the mechanisms as to how bacterial pathogens manipulate their host plants. Bonas received many prestigious awards and also serves the scientific community, e.g., as vice president of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as Kahmann’s laudation describes, which DBG’s president Weber presented at our member assembly in Halle, Germany, on 17th September 2024.