Hawkes studied mathematics at the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany as well as at Yale, where he received his doctorate in 1900 under James Pierpont.

After authoring several texts in algebra, Hawkes accepted a position as professor of mathematics at Columbia University in 1910.

He promoted a full undergraduate education and opposed the "Columbia plan" to fast-track students to graduate school in under four years.

In 1919, he and a small group of other faculty members helped assemble a sequence of war-issues classes known as "Contemporary Civilization;" this would become a more general year-long philosophy course and the cornerstone of the college's famous Core Curriculum.

His advocacy of general education classes in the natural sciences, however, did not meet with the same success.