In 1979, the ACS formed a task force chaired by Ned D. Heindel to look at creating a national center for the history of chemistry. Arnold Thackray, a professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and curator of the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection on the history of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, argued for the formation of such a center in Philadelphia. Thackray obtained promises of private support from chemist John C. Haas and institutional support from the Dow Chemical Company and DuPont. In December 1981, the ACS approved the establishment of the Center for the History of Chemistry, with support of $50,000 per year for five years, in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania, which was to provide an equivalent in goods and services. An agreement to create the Center for the History of Chemistry was signed by officers of the American Chemical Society and the University of Pennsylvania on January 22 and 26, 1982.  A policy council was appointed by the sponsoring institutions to oversee routine operations of the center, and Arnold Thackray was appointed part-time director of the center on April 29, 1982. The center was inaugurated on March 11, 1983, in several vacant basement rooms on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Its "immediate aims" included gathering oral histories of important chemists and inventorying papers and manuscripts in repositories throughout the country to map "the largely unexplored territory of the history of chemistry and chemical technology."
A National Advisory Board was also formed from a wide-ranging group of people in academia and industry. In 1982, its members included John C. Haas, historians Margaret W. Rossiter and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and at least three Nobel Prize winners, Christian B. Anfinsen, Herbert C. Brown, and Glenn T. Seaborg. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) became a co-founder of the center, signing an agreement on August 27 and 28, 1984. In addition, the institution began to establish relationships with affiliated organizations such as The Chemists' Club, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, the Electrochemical Society and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.
As early as 1983, the Center for the History of Chemistry expressed an interest in "The Conservation of Historic American Chemical Instruments", in discussions of a possible joint project with the Smithsonian.  However, the center did not yet have exhibition or collections space to allow for the acquisition of any but the most limited quantities of documents. The center did curate a number of traveling exhibitions by collaborating with other organizations, including "Joseph Priestley: Enlightened Chemist", "Polymers and People", "Scaling Up",  and "Chemical Education in the United States".