Grigore Antipa spent his childhood in Botoșani, in a neighborhood inhabited by many Armenians and Jews, who taught him in foreign languages.

Thanks to his older brother, Nicolae, who was a parasitologist, he obtained a royal scholarship and studied at Jena (Germany), with the famous naturalist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), the inventor of ecology.

Antipa founded in 1932 the Biooceanographic Institute of Constanța, with the two reservations and research stations, the one in Agigea (created by Ioan Borcea) and the one at Cape Caliacra.

The Museum of Natural History also has dioramas depicting the fauna of the tundra, prairie, savannah or Sahara desert regions.

In 1992, the National Bank of Romania issued a circulation banknote, with a face value of 200 lei, with the portrait of Grigore Antipa on the obverse.

On December 4, 2017, the National Bank of Romania put into circulation a gold commemorative coin, with a face value of 100 lei, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Antipa.

The coin has a fineness of 900 (90% pure gold), weighs 6.452 g (0.2276 oz), has a diameter of 21 mm (0.83 in), and has a serrated edge; it has been issued in 250 copies, all of proof quality.