[1] His mentor was zoologist and biologist Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, a professor at the Sorbonne and at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.

[2][3] As a promising young scientist, Racoviță was selected to be part of an international team that started out on a research expedition to Antarctica, aboard the Belgica.

On 16 August 1897, under the aegis of the Royal Society of Geography in Brussels, the Belgica, a former Norwegian wooden whaler, left the port of Antwerp, setting sail for the South.

Apart from Racoviță, the team was made up of Belgian physicist Émile Danco, Polish geologist and oceanographer Henryk Arctowski with his assistant Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski and American physician Frederick Cook.

The scientists also collected information on oceanic currents and terrestrial magnetism, with as many as 10 volumes of scientific conclusions being published at the end of the expedition, which was considered a success.

A year after his return, Racoviță was appointed director of the Banyuls-sur-Mer resort and editor of the review Archives de zoologie expérimentale et générale.

Racoviță continued his research, contributing to speleology and exploring over 1,400 caves in France, Spain, Algeria, Italy, and Slovenia.

He founded the world's first speleological institute there on 26 April 1920,[nb 1] first as a section which was, however, to function independently since 1956, with professor Constantin Motas.

[10] In the aftermath of the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, the Faculty of Sciences and the Institute of Speleology at the University of Cluj were forced to move out of the city and take refuge in Timișoara.

In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of Racoviță's birth, the National Bank of Romania put into circulation a commemorative silver coin with a face value of 10 lei.