Helmut Hasse was born on 25 August 1898 in Kassel, Germany. He served in World War I and was educated at the University of Göttingen. His academic appointments included Göttingen and the University of Hamburg. Hasse's career suffered, as with most German academics, during the Nazi period and World War II. Hasse died on 26 December 1979 in Ahrensburg, Germany.
Hasse made fundamental contributions in algebra and in algebraic number theory. For students of mathematics, Hasse is known for the graphs used to represent partial orders on finite sets.