Completely unaided by the colonial British Government the University College of Science and Technology was founded on March 27,1914, by the great visionary Sir Asutosh Mukherjee, the then Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, using the generous donation from Sir Taraknath Palit and  Sir Rashbehari Ghosh who together donated nearly thirty seven and half lakhs of rupees and the premises,  presently known as, “Rashbehari Siksha Prangan” at 92, Acharya Profulla Chandra Road , Kolkata – 700 009 and “Taraknath Palit Siksha Prangan” at 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata – 700 019, owned by Sir Palit. The first batch of teachers included Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, Sir Chandra Sekher Venkata Raman , Sisir Kumar Mitra and the legendary 1915 M.Sc. batch comprising Satyendranath Bose, Meghnad Saha , Jnanchandra Ghosh , Jnanendranath Mukherjee and others. The College served as the cradle of Indian Sciences winning Noble Prize by Sir Raman in 1930 and many fellowship of the Royal society.

Acharya Ray established the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical works , a step towards self-reliance of our Country. Saha and Ghosh later participated in a big way in National Planning Commission .

UCSTA recently started its further expansion in the Technology Campus at Salt Lake.