William Vatter was an American accounting scholar.
Vatter was born in 1905 in Cincinnati. In his early years he hoped to be a musician, and he played the violin, viola, piano and French horn. He later received a B.A. from Miami University in Ohio and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, where he would also go on to teach accounting.
In 1942, Vatter was hired to work on the Manhattan Project as the Director of Finance for the Chicago Met Lab. After the war, he also went on to teach at the University of California, Berkeley.
Vatter died on September 15, 1990, in Oceanside, California.