Helmut Hasse


Helmut Hasse was a German mathematician working in algebraic number theory, known for fundamental contributions to class field theory, the application of p-adic numbers to local class field theory and diophantine geometry, and to local zeta functions.

Life

Hasse was born in Kassel, Province of Hesse-Nassau, the son of Judge Paul Reinhard Hasse, also written Haße and his wife Margarethe Louise Adolphine Quentin and Margarethe Wehr.
After serving in the Imperial German Navy in World War I, he studied at the University of Göttingen, and then at the University of Marburg under Kurt Hensel, writing a dissertation in 1921 containing the Hasse–Minkowski theorem, as it is now called, on quadratic forms over number fields. He then held positions at Kiel, Halle and Marburg. He was Hermann Weyl's replacement at Göttingen in 1934.
Hasse was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1932 in Zürich and a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo.
In 1933 Hasse had signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.
Politically, he applied for membership in the Nazi Party in 1937, but this was denied to him due to his Jewish ancestry. After the war, he briefly returned to Göttingen in 1945, but was excluded by the British authorities. After brief appointments in Berlin, from 1948 on he settled permanently as professor in Hamburg.
He collaborated with many mathematicians, in particular with Emmy Noether and Richard Brauer on simple algebras, and with Harold Davenport on Gauss sums, and with Cahit Arf on the Hasse–Arf theorem.

Publications

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