He was born in Yorkshire, England, on 3 November 1872, the son of Edmund Herring.
He studied medicine at the University of Otago, New Zealand, returning to Scotland to complete his degree.
[2] From 1908 until 1948 he held the Chandos Chair of Medicine and Physiology at the Bute Medical School, at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, during which time he described what are now known as Herring bodies, in 1908.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1916, his proposers being Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, Sir James Walker, Cargill Gilston Knott, and James Hartley Ashworth.
He died at home, 16 Hepburn Gardens in St Andrews on 24 October 1967.