He was born in Chicago on November 20, 1878. He attended the public schools and graduated from Chicago College of Law in 1900, gaining admission to the bar the same year. He studied chemistry at Lewis Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) for two years and engaged in the chemical business.

During the First World War, Albert Hawkes served as director of the Chemical Alliance in Washington, D.C. (1917–1918). From 1927 to 1942, Hawkes served as president of Congoleum-Nairn, Inc., at Kearny, New Jersey. He assumed chairmanship of the corporation board in 1937. He was president and director of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States in 1941 and 1942, a member of the Newark Labor Board, and a member of the Board to Maintain Industrial Peace in New Jersey 1941-1942. Hawkes was a member of the National War Labor Board, Washington, D.C., in 1942.

In 1942, Albert Hawkes was elected in New Jersey as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and served from January 3, 1943, to January 3, 1949. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1948, and resumed former business activities in Montclair, New Jersey, until 1961, when he moved to Pasadena, California.

Hawkes was a trustee of the Freedoms Foundation, where the Hawkes Library (in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania) was named after him. He died on May 9, 1971, in Palm Desert, California. He was interred in Mount Hebron Cemetery, in Montclair, New Jersey.^[1]

His daughter in law, Jane White Hawkes, was the second wife of the late Alistair Cooke, the British-American journalist who hosted Masterpiece Theatre.

• United States Congress. "Albert W. Hawkes (id: H000365)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.