Helmut Hasse

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Helmut Hasse (pronounced HAHS uh) (25 August 1898 – 26 December 1979) 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 classfield theory and diophantine geometry (Hasse principle), and to local zeta functions. He was born in Kassel, and died in Ahrensburg.

After serving in the navy in World War I, he studied at the University of Göttingen, and then at 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; politically he was a right-wing nationalist, and applied for membership in the Nazi Party in 1937. After war work he returned to Göttingen briefly in 1945 but was excluded by the British authorities. After brief appointments in Berlin from 1948 he settled permanently as professor in Hamburg.

He collaborated with a number of other mathematicians: in particular with Emmy Noether and Richard Brauer on simple algebras; and with Harold Davenport on Gauss sums (Hasse-Davenport relations).