The name of this Institute had changed several times. The predecessor of the Institute was the Colloid–Electrochemical Laboratory established in StPetersburg (Leningrad) in 1929 under the leadership of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kistyakovskyi (1865-1952). Here is 2025 article of Olga V. Makarova citing rare archive documents related to creation of this lab in the Chemical Institute of the Academy of Sciences (ХИН), established in 1924 on the basis of the pre-revolutionary Chemical Laboratory (first created in XVIII century). It was one of four laboratories in the Institute, each of them gave rise to separate well-known academic Institutes in 1930s.

Kistyakovskyi and his laboratory were 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.