It is part of the Faculty of Sciences, and is located in the Edmond J. Safra Campus (Givat Ram) in Jerusalem.

The origins of the institute date back to 1925, the year that the Hebrew University was founded,[1] when the Department of Botany was formed as part of a research unit called "The Institute for Studying the Natural History of the Land of Israel".

[5] During the first years of the department, several large-scale projects that continue to this day have been started off, including the establishment of the Herbarium Collection,[6] today part of Israel's Natural History Collections,[7] and the establishment of the National Botanic Garden of Israel at Mount Scopus, which was the first of its kind in the Middle East.

[8] Research activities at both departments (and at the Hebrew University in general) were diminished in 1948 during the War of Independence, and were brought to a complete stop following the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.

[1] Throughout the years AS-ILS members have conducted basic research as well as applied science in the fields of biomedicine, biotechnology and agriculture at multiple levels of organization, from molecular mechanism in cells, through processes within the whole organism, and to studies at the population level.