In 1911, he won the Nobel Peace Prize (together with Alfred Fried) for his role in the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899 and for his achievements in establishing the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH).

Tobias Michael Carel Asser was born on 28 April 1838 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in a Jewish family.

In 1893, Asser initiated the convocation of the First Diplomatic Session of the HCCH, the preeminent global organisation in the area of private international law.

The participating States were Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland.

In his Award Ceremony Speech on 10 December 1911, Chairman of the Nobel Committee Jørgen Gunnarsson Løvland emphasised specifically Asser's work in the field of private international law, and his achievements in establishing the HCCH, as reasons for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, describing Asser as "a successor to or reviver of The Netherlands' pioneer work in international law in the seventeenth century", the Hugo Grotius of his time.