[2] In the early years of the first Czechoslovak Republic, the Institute of Geophysics was launched by one of the founders of modern seismology, Václav Láska, who served as founding director (1920–1933).

A key early achievement was the commissioning of a Wiechert horizontal seismograph in 1924,[1] part of the emerging global network of seismic stations at the time.

[6] Research activities[7] span a broad range of field-based, modelling and theoretical approaches in the Earth sciences, including active plate tectonic processes, the dynamics of orogeny, rock deformation, environmental magnetism, the geomagnetic field and geodynamo, local seismicity studies, sedimentary basins, seismic wave and source studies, the structure of continental lithosphere, geomorphology, palaeoclimatology, and volcanic and magmatic processes.

[23] Institute scientists participate in university education, teaching undergraduate courses and supervising master's and doctoral research.

[2] The institute established a scientific journal, Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica,[24] in 1956, now distributed by Springer Nature.