Herman was born on 24 March 1934 in Libušín. He studied physical chemistry and radiochemistry at the School of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, Prague (1952–1957). He then joined the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, to which he remained affiliated.
Herman's early work, with Vladimír Čermák concerned mass spectrometric studies of the kinetics of collision and ionization processes of ions (chemical reaction of ions, Penning and associative ionization). During his post-doctoral years (1964–1965), with Richard Wolfgang at Yale University, Herman built one of the first crossed beam machines to study ion-molecule processes.
Herman also built an improved crossed beam machine that was used in Prague with colleagues to investigate the dynamics of ion-molecule and charge transfer reactions of cations and dications, and ion-surface collisions by the scattering method (1970–2010).
Herman has published over 240 scientific articles in this field.