The Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR) has its origins in the Raffles Museum which was founded in 1849. It is now part of the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore. The animal collection is well known to international scientists as the Zoological Reference Collection (ZRC), and the successor of the famous 'Raffles Collection'). It contains the historical collection of the former Raffles Museum, established since 1849 as a result of an idea mooted by Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore who was an eminent naturalist. Today, it is the proud host to the single largest collection of Southeast Asian fauna in the region containing at least 400,000 catalogued specimens. The Herbarium (SINU) was founded in 1955 as a teaching museum by Professor Gilliland of what was then the Department of Botany. It now serves as a documentation of the rich plant resources in Southeast Asia with 18,730 specimens in its holdings. The Culture Collection holds about 2,000 strains of fungi and a small number of bacteria, collected and maintained over the last 30 years to support teaching and research in the NUS by the Mycology and Plant Pathology Laboratory originally of the Department of Botany. After a hiatus of 30 years, the Public Gallery was opened on 15th June 2001 and a selection of the collection is displayed there. Currently, entrance is free. More information about the research and education activities is available the webpage.