Herrmann Károly Ottó was born in Breznóbánya, Kingdom of Hungary (modern day Slovakia) into a Zipser German family.

At age 14 he wanted to join the Hungarian revolutionaries of 1848 but was sent home because he couldn't provide a letter of his father's consent.

Later, Herman spent years in military service in the Austrian Army as a punishment for trying deliberately to avoid conscription.

Herman was an autodidact who immersed himself in a wide variety of zoological (ornithological, ichthyological), speleological, archaeological and ethnographic sources.

He was the first person who stated that cavemen lived in Hungary in the past after examining the chopping tools found in the area surrounding Miskolc.

The association operated under modest circumstances; the aging head of the Department of Natural Sciences, Sámuel Brassai, managed the collection in Kolozsvár (Cluj) with a single employee.

Herman submitted a prepared abino skylark and a stuffed ermine, accompanied by a letter of support from Kálmán Chernel.

He produced his first major scientific work here on the Eurasian hobby, which was published in 1865 under the title "Falco subbuteo Linné".

[5] Herman did not strive for popularity and despised those scientists who searched out unknown species to have their name remembered in the academic world.

Carl Brunner invited him to Vienna to participate in a planned African zoological expedition to Cameroon.

The Hungarian Natural History Society, thanks to the efforts of Kálmán Szily and János Frivaldszky, counter-offered with a multi-year scholarship to retain him.

[10] His former home built in 1890 in Lillafüred, which he called "Pele-house", was a tourist hut bearing his name, and is now known as Ottó Herman Memorial House.

As part of the anniversary celebration, the City Council of Miskolc posthumously awarded honorary citizenship to Herman.

Starting December 2014, Duna Television broadcast a four-part documentary about the life of the scientist, entitled Ottó Herman, the Last Hungarian Polymath.