The Department of Life Sciences is a direct descendent of the Departments of Botany, of Plant Pathology and of Zoology of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, founded in 1922.

The Department of Plant Pathology was incorporated into the Botany Department in 1955, and the new Department named the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.

The site of the I.C.T.A. became the Trinidad campus of the then University College of the West Indies in 1960 and the Imperial College was transformed into the first Faculty at St. Augustine, the Faculty of Agriculture.

In 1968, before the move was made in 1970 to the newly completed John F. Kennedy Science Block, the Zoology Department was merged with the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology to form the Department of Biological Sciences and later the subject area of Biochemistry was added. The Department subsequently split up again into Botany and Zoology, and the Biochemists went to Mount Hope to the new Medical Faculty there.

In 1996 they were all recombined again as the present Department of Life Sciences, following the pattern of the School of Life Sciences inaugurated a few years ago internally by the staff in an attempt at rationalisation.