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CNRS traces its roots to France’s long scientific tradition, including the French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666. During World War I, the government saw how German scientists supported the military advantage and began mobilizing French engineers and researchers for defense needs rather than sending them to the front.

A central figure was physicist Jean Perrin, winner of the 1926 Nobel Prize for work on Brownian motion and the atomic nature of matter. In April 1933, after a petition signed by more than 80 scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, France created the Higher Council for Scientific Research. In 1937, Perrin founded the Palais de la Découverte in Paris.

On May 24, 1938, the National Center for Applied Scientific Research was created. On October 19, 1939, President Albert Lebrun merged it with the National Fund for Scientific Research, forming the “Centre national de la recherche scientifique”, or CNRS. France had just entered the war against the Third Reich, and the new institution was tasked with organizing nationwide scientific mobilization.

During the German occupation, some CNRS researchers joined the Resistance, while others left France. Perrin fled to the United States and died in New York in April 1942. After liberation, CNRS rebuilt its work; in 1946, it opened its first scientific campus in Gif-sur-Yvette. In 1954, it created the CNRS Gold Medal, which was first awarded to the mathematician Émile Borel. Later reforms created joint research laboratories in 1966, astronomy and geophysics structures in 1967, IN2P3 in 1971, and helped shape European cooperation alongside institutions such as the Max Planck Society.