In the 1891-1892 school year in the First Supreme School in Sofia was founded a natural science department, in which Dr. Bone Baev started reading geology lectures. In 1892 the students from the First Secondary School for Boys donated a collection of 450 minerals, rocks and fossils which laid the foundation of the present museums in the geological departments of t he Faculty of Geology and Geography. At 26.06.1894 an inventory was taken of the first bought samples – “A Collection of minerals in the composition of rocks” (the “Krantz” collection).
In the course of time the museum have been housed in different buildings of the University which has been bombed. In 1953 the museum was moved from the building of the Biological Faculty to the new south wing of the Sofia University where it is housed until now. The project for the expositions and the new show cases is achievement of Acad. Iv. Kostov, who was the head of the department at that time.
In the course of time directors of the museum have been eminent Bulgarian geologists and mineralogists, such as: Prof. Georgi Zlatarski, Acad. Georgi Bonchev, Prof. N. Nikolov and Acad. Ivan Kostov. Old inventories, manuscripts and original labels written by generations of geologists are now stored in the museum. Works of lecturers and students in the department of “Mineralogy, Petrology and Mineral Resources” are kept in the museum’s archives – Acad. Iv. Kostov, Prof. Str. Dimitrov, Prof. V. Vergilov, Prof. M. Jeliaskova-Panaiotova, Prof. B. Mavrudchiev, Prof. B. Aleksiev, Reader M. Maleev, Reader V. Mladenova, Reader R. Kostov, V. Vangelova, St. Boiadjiev, Sv. Petrusenko, V. Arnaudov, Evd. Naidenova, S. Aslanian – they researched and took part in many dissertations, articles and graduation works.
