H. E. Dr. Ph. C. Visser was born at Schiedam and, in his early manhood, spent some years with the family business in that town. At the age of twenty he made his first acquaintance with high mountains and soon became an enthusiastic mountaineer. In 1913 he was made a member of the Alpine Club in London.

In 1914 he took part in an expedition to the Caucasus, but the First World War put a stop to such expeditions and soon after his return he became Secretary to the Netherlands ambulance in Russia. In 1919 he was appointed Secretary to the Netherlands Legation in Stockholm. In 1931 he became Netherlands Consul-General in Calcutta and in 1938 Minister to Turkey. In 1945 he headed the Netherlands Legation in South Africa and in 1948 he was appointed to the important post of Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.

Dr. Visser received many honours including the Gold Medal of the Société de Géographie and the Back Grant of the Royal Geographical Society; he was also an honorary member of many mountaineering clubs. He was the author of many works, some of general or political interest, but mostly on glaciers and mountaineering.

Between 1921 and 1935 he led four expeditions to the Karakoram and his account of that part of the world, written in conjunction with his first wife (Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Niederländischen Expeditionen in den Karakorum und die angrenzenden Gebiete in den Jahren 1922, 1925,1929–30 und 1935, Bd. 2, Glaziologie: Leiden, E. J. Brill) ranks as one of the earlier classics of the modern glaciology.