Born in Elgetina, Sudan, on 21 November 1947.

Hassan is executive director of TWAS, president of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and chairman of the Honorary Presidential Advisory Council for S&T in Nigeria. After obtaining his DPhil (University of Oxford, 1974), he returned to Sudan as professor and dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Khartoum. He received the Comendator (1996), Grand Cross (2005), and National Order of Scientific Merit, Brazil; and Officer, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2003. His membership includes: Founding fellow, AAS, 1985; fellow, Islamic World Academy of Sciences, 1992; honorary member, Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, 1996; corresponding member, Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Belgium, 2001; and foreign fellow, Pakistan Academy of Sciences, 2002. Founding member of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences.

His fields cover theoretical plasma physics; wind erosion; sand and dust transport; diffusion of dust particles.