The name of this Institute had changed several times. Its predecessor was the Colloid–Electrochemical Laboratory established in StPetersburg (Leningrad) in 1929 under the leadership of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kistyakovskyi (1865-1952). The 2025 article of Olga V. Makarova cites rare archive documents related to the foundation of this lab within the Chemical Institute of the Academy of Sciences (ХИН), established in 1924 as the successor of the pre-revolutionary Chemical Laboratory (first created in XVIII century). Each of the four laboratories of this Institute gave rise to separate well-known academic Institutes in 1930s.

Kistyakovskyi and his laboratory moved to Moscow in 1934 to form the Colloid–Electrochemical Institute. Frumkin became the director of this Institute in 1939 (and continued in Karpov Inst in parallel). The Institute’s name was officially changed for the Institute of Physical Chemistry in 1946. It was finally transformed into the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry named under A.N. Frumkin in 2004, after incorporating the real Frumkin Institute.