His father was Werner Haken, a physicist who had Max Planck as a doctoral thesis advisor.

In 1962, they left Germany so he could accept a position as visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

[2] He was a recipient of the 1979 Fulkerson Prize of the American Mathematical Society for his proof with Appel of the four-color theorem.

[4] Haken's eldest son, Armin, proved that there exist propositional tautologies that require resolution proofs of exponential size.

[5] Haken's eldest daughter, Dorothea Blostein, is a professor of computer science, known for her discovery of the master theorem for divide-and-conquer recurrences.