It was established by Robert Edmond Grant in 1828 as a teaching collection of zoological specimens and material for dissection.

On his death Grant left his own collection to the museum, and was briefly succeeded by William Henry Allchin[6] before care of the collection passed to invertebrate zoologist Edwin Ray Lankester in 1875.

[7] Later lecturer curators included evolutionary biologist W. F. R. Weldon,[8] Edward Alfred Minchin,[9] embryologist J. P. Hill[10] and palaeontologist D. M. S.

[1] In 2011, the museum moved from its previous location in the Darwin Building on the UCL campus to the Thomas Lewis Room in the Rockefeller Building, formerly the UCL Medical School library.

[12] The Grant Museum contains around 68,000 zoological specimens, many of which are very rare and several of which have been recently rediscovered.