As MD and first-generation Board-Certified Clinical Geneticist, Hans-Hilger Ropers has a long-standing interest in the molecular elucidation, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of genetic disorders. In the 1980ies, he was an active member of the Gene Mapping Community, acting as Chromosome Chair and Co-Chair at all Human Genome Mapping Conferences between 1985 and 1993, and from 2003 to 2011, he served as Council and Program Committee member of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). Hans-Hilger Ropers was an early critic of the world-wide search for common genetic markers of complex diseases, which he characterized as futile and ‘a waste of time’ (FAZ, 2001). He was among the first to point out that for the vast majority of complex diseases, common genetic markers are unlikely to exist (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2007), and he argued that genome research should focus on monogenic diseases instead (Dialogues in Clin. Neurosci. 2010; Max-Planck-Jahrbuch 2011). Later on, he repeatedly urged the German government to emulate the Genomics England project that had started in 2012 (BBAW 2013) and to implement next generation sequencing techniques into genetic health care (Ropers, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) 2018; Arnold et al, KAS 2019).