Formally, the Department of Chemistry has been created as a separate entity of Saint Petersburg State University (then Leningrad State University) in 1929. However, the history of chemistry at Saint Petersburg State University began much earlier. First chemistry laboratory and lectures in chemistry were introduced at the University in 1833. Many Russian chemists began their career and/or worked there. Among them are Nikolay Zinin, Alexey Favorsky, Lev Aleksandrovich Chugaev, Sergei Vasiljevich Lebedev, Vyacheslav Tishchenko, Vladimir Ipatieff, Nikolay Semyonov, Boris Nikolsky, Mikhail Shultz. In the Soviet era, the Department of Chemistry continued to grow with new divisions: colloid chemistry (1939), electrochemistry (1940), chemistry of macromolecular compounds (1944), radiochemistry (1945), physical organic chemistry (1946), theory of solutions (1950), chemistry of natural compounds (1963), quantum chemistry (1967), solid state chemistry (1978).