Herman was born in 1854 in Tsarskoye Selo, a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 26 kilometers (16 mi) south from the center of St. Petersburg.

Accompanied by his cousin's husband, Struve stayed in several cities, including Straßburg (Strasbourg), Paris, Milan, Graz and Berlin, learning from such celebrities as Helmholtz, Kirchhoff, Boltzmann and Weierstrass.

[1] By then, the Struve family was highly respected in Russia and Tsar Alexander III had a strong wish for Hermann to succeed his father Otto as the director of the Pulkovo Observatory.

However, Hermann politely declined the offer, mentioning that he was in the middle of crucial observations of Saturn which would be interrupted by administrative tasks.

Pro-Russian views were gradually developing in Russian society, including science, and foreigners felt progressively more alienated.

The location was chosen at Neubabelsberg, near Potsdam and 25 kilometers (16 mi) from the center of Berlin, and the new institution was named Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory.

While he did not get to operate them himself due to delays caused by World War I, the refractor was much used by his son Georg, and the reflector by his lesser-known grandson Wilfried.

[3][4][5] Struve's death was accelerated by a heart illness which he suffered from during his late years and by a bad fall from a tram car in 1919.

Otto wrote to his uncle for help, unaware of his death, but Eva asked assistance of Paul Guthnick, her late husband's successor at the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory.

[7] As with all astronomers of the Struve family, Herman was mostly working on establishing positions and movements of single and double stars and satellites of the planets of the Solar System.

After moving to Königsberg Observatory, Struve built a 32.5-inch refractor telescope there and continued his work on the moons of Saturn, the last observations of which he made in 1916.

His other topics included a study of atmospheric refraction, stellar parallaxes, drawings of Jupiter, determination of the position of Mars' equator, the amount of its oblateness and the rate of motion of the nodes.

[6] In 1897, Struve received the Damoiseau Prize from the French Academy of Sciences and in 1903 the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, both for his work on satellites of Saturn.