The Department of Physics in Sri Venkateswara College was established in 1973 with just two teachers Dr. Surya Prakash Tewari and Dr. V. Brahmaji Rao, one senior lab assistant Mr. S. V. Ramana Murty and one attendant Mr. Sunder Singh. The department was set up essentially to teach additional physics in the B.Sc. General Group B course. In 1984 the college started the B.Sc. (General) Group A with Electronics specialization course which was to be mainly run by the department of physics. The enormous success of this course led to the introduction of the B.Sc. (Honours) Electronics course in 1987 and the physics department which had to run this course was quite aptly renamed by the college as the Department of Physics & Electronics. With the initiation of this course the department acquired high quality experimental apparatus and highly sensitive testing and measuring devices. All this was accomplished by the department with the pioneering efforts of the then Principal of the college Dr. V. Krishnamoorthy. The B.Sc. (Honours) physics course came into existence in the college in 1992. The gradual growth of the department soon gave rise to the formation of a separate department called the Physics department to cater exclusively to physics students.

Besides well-equipped laboratories for the undergraduate courses, Physics department also has research laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment including Nabertherm Muffle Furnace, Retsch Planetary ball mill, Weyne Kerr Impedance Analyzer, P-E loop tracer, Piezoelectric Poling unit, Thermofisher-Harshaw TLD reader. The much needed impetus to develop such a research infrastructure was provided by the then Principal Padmashree A. Sankara Reddy whose great motivation resulted in getting two major research projects on experimental physics by the department in 2008. Since then 8 major research projects have been awarded to the department by various funding agencies such as UGC, SERB, DST and IUAC with over 80 research articles published in various international refereed journals of repute as an outcome. Today a healthy research environment exists in the department where Ph.D students registered in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi, with our teachers as supervisors, as well as the undergraduate students of the college actively undertake their research work.