On December 25, 1925 on the initiative of the young professor Alexandre Janelidze, a graduate of the Sorbonne and Kazan universities, the Institute of Geology was founded on the basis of the Department of Geology and Paleontology of the Tbilisi State University. It was one of the first scientific-research institutions of geological profile in the former Soviet Union. In 1941, the Institute entered the system of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, in 2006, it came under the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, and since 2010, it has been part of the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.