Hans-Walter Rix has been working on understanding why galaxies—arising ultimately from random fluctuations in the early Universe—exhibit such intricate structure and beautiful regularity in their dynamics and stellar populations. The tools of his trade are extensive spectroscopic and imaging surveys of galaxies, galaxy dynamics, and stringent data modelling approaches. He is pursuing two fundamentally different approaches to understanding how galaxies arose: looking to far-away and hence younger galaxies, and dissecting our very own Milky Way as a model organism for galaxies.