Hasan Alirza oglu Aliyev was born in 1907 in Jomardli village of Zangazur district, Yelzavetpol (Ganja) province of Garakilsi district (later Sisyan district). He was an Azerbaijani scientist, socio-political figure, Honoured Scientist of the Azerbaijan SSR (1974), Secretary of the Party Committee of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR (1950), First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Azerbaijan Republic, Secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan (1952), Academic Secretary of ANAS (1952– 1957), member of the Baku Council of Labor Deputies (1953–1956), full member of the Royal Society of Bibliographers of England, director of the Institute of Geography of ANAS (1968–1987), which later was named after him.

In 1944, he was appointed Deputy Director for Scientific Affairs of the Department of Soil Science and Agrochemistry. When Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences was established in 1945, the department became an institute, and until 1949 he worked as a deputy director at the institute. In 1945, he was again invited to the position of senior lecturer at the Faculty of Geography of Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute, where he worked until 1949. In 1946–1962 he was the chairman of Azerbaijan branch of the All-Union Soil Science Society, in 1949–1952 he worked as the director of the Institute of Botany of ANAS. In 1952, he was promoted to the position of First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Azerbaijan and in the same year Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. In 1952, he served as Academician-Secretary of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan due to structural changes in the former Central Committee of Azerbaijan, and in the same year was elected a full member of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. For the first time between the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the academies of sciences of the allied republics, Hasan Aliyev established the Nature Protection Commission under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan in 1955 and headed this commission. He was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan SSR.

His main scientific work covers the theory of soil science, ecology, botany, plant growing, problems of conservation and more efficient use of natural resources and natural conditions, in general, various fields of natural science. In 1957, he organized Forest Soil Laboratory within the Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry of ANAS and was the head of this department for 35 years. In 1968, in connection with the appointment of the director of the Institute of Geography, the department was transferred to the Institute of Geography.

In 1965, 17 years after being elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the lands of Greater Caucasus and ways of its efficient use (within the Azerbaijan SSR) and received the degree of Doctor of Agricultural Sciences. From 1968 to 1987 he headed the Institute of Geography of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences.

In 1977 he was elected a member of the Soviet National Committee for the first UNESCO project on man and the biosphere (tropical and subtropical ecosystems). In 1977, he participated in the First UNESCO Interstate Conference in Tbilisi. He was invited to give lectures in Bulgaria in 1976 and in Hungary in 1979. In 1975, he was elected President of the Geographical Society of the Republic and headed this public organization until 1990. In 1981, he participated in the Soviet-West German symposium in Germany. He published 751 works during 1940-1985.

Hasan Aliyev died in 1992. His memory was immortalised, a street, a school and a research institution were named after him.