In chronological order:

• Giovanni Battista Bianchi, a physician keenly interested in zoology and founder of the Zoology Museum of the University of Turin in 1739;
• Franco Andrea Bonelli and Giuseppe Gené, both of them zoologists and directors of the Museum of the University of Turin, increased its scientific reputation from the turn of the 19th century;
• Filippo De Filippi, a physician and zoologist, during his voyage around the globe (1865-1867) aboard the Royal Corvette Magenta, assembled such a vast collection that the Department of Comparative Anatomy at the University of Turin, founded by De Filippi himself in 1848, had to be converted into a separate museum (1891) in order to house all the specimens;
• Mario Giacinto Peracca (1861–1923), a renowned herpetologist and taxonomist, enriched the Museum collections of amphibians and reptiles through a steady network of zoologists and naturalists, such as George Albert Boulenger from the British Museum – Natural History (now called Natural History Museum) in London;
• Michele Lessona, a zoologist and scientific populariser, and Lorenzo Camerano, a herpetologist and entomologist, gave such an impetus to scientific research (second half of the 19th century – first decades of the 20th), that the Museum became one of the most noteworthy all over Europe.

From the post-war period onwards, the collections users declined, due to the emerging research trend, not longer oriented towards the morphological-descriptive and comparative approach that had marked out the collections until then. Accordingly, the preparation and arrangement of the collections took on a radically different approach.

More recently, the urge to revamp taxonomic and conservation studies has helped revitalise the mission of natural history museums for a deeper understanding of our planet. Collections have thus become unrivalled resources for a new vision of biodiversity.

The richness of the MRSN's insect collection, both in number and rareness of specimens, made it necessary to create the Section of Entomology.

The preserved specimens, technically called 'vouchers', are specimen collected in the field during research studies and cataloguing process. They make it possible to gather information that would be difficult to collect in any other way (photos, videos, recordings, environmental DNA analysis, etc.)

The collection of new vouchers is crucial to describe new species, confirm the presence and /or the distribution of a species in a specific area, and provide evidence of the genesis of emerging infectious diseases, as demonstrated with COVID-19, even decades or centuries later.

The MRSN houses over 30,000 specimens (from the University of Turin) and some 20,000 recent specimens. The Echinoderm group (sea urchins, starfish, sea cucumbers, etc.), in- depth studied by the zoologist Enrico Tortonese (1911-1987), and the Crustacea group, thoroughly analysed by Giuseppe Nobili (1877-1908) and Alceste Arcangeli (1880-1965), stand out for their uniqueness. Other collections include lesser-known specimens and groups.