Herbert Watman was born in the Bronx, NY, on June 12th, 1921. He graduated from James Monroe High School in 1937. At a young age he held various jobs up until he joined the U.S. Air Force during WWII. He served in the Asia Pacific, first deployed to Australia and then serving predominately in the Philippines from 1942-1945. He received his BS in Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Brooklyn in 1956. He was the first in his family to go to college as a first generation American. His parents had immigrated from Russia during the turn of the century. He got a job at the Grumman Corporation in 1956 and moved to Queens, NY. He married his wife, Esther, in 1957. In the following years they had a son, Brian, and a daughter, Gail. He returned to Polytechnic to achieve his MS in Aeronautics in 1962. He and other engineers were subcontracted to North American Rockwell in California, briefly in 1973, to work on the Space Shuttle. He worked on the design of the wings for the shuttle. He was one of the first to develop a computer program that provided a zoom feature, making it helpful in engineering while using the computer. In his later years at Grumman his specialty gravitated towards designing computer programs. He won various innovation awards such as the Project Sterling Award in 1979 for a computer program used to analyze other computer programs. He also won awards for excellence and cost savings for the company. He worked on the F-14 Tomcat and other fighter planes that proved to be huge successes in the industry. He was a member of the AIAA.

In addition to his native English, he spoke Yiddish, German, as well as studying Hebrew and Latin. He was an early supporter of human rights. He gave to many charities and was formally recognized for contributing to building the National Museum of the US army. He was very engaged in his community as a co-op board member, his temple, as well as the Jewish War Veterans Organization.

Herbert Watman passed on June 25th, 2015, one year after his wife Esther had passed.