The Institute of Natural Science was founded in March 1981 to meet the demand for an institute to support research activities in basic sciences at Yeungnam University. The institute consists of five departments; mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry and life science.

The activities that the institute are currently engaged in are as follows.

1. To offer administrative services for acquisition and execution of research funds.
2. To carry out researches as a principal investigator, usually for the interdisciplinary and industry-academia cooperative projects.
3. To hold symposia, seminars and lectures to provide the members of the institute with the information on the trends and prospects of current basic sciences.
4. To publish the results of the researches performed by the members of the institute.

The institute was assigned as a participant of the Specialized Institute Program of the Ministry of Education during 1984-1994 and carried out a study on the Chemistry of Coordination Compounds. The institute was recently designated as a Priority Institute by Korean Research Foundation in 1999 and carried out an interdisciplinary research project on the "Development of Analytical Methods for Environmental Toxicants and Study on the DNA-Toxicant Interactions", which was completed in 2003.