The Seminar on Combinatorics, Geometry, Topology, and Algebra (CGTA) was created spontaneously around 1985, by a group of Belgrade mathematicians with different mathematical interests and backgrounds (originally under the name GTA-seminar).

The members of the founding group were Sava Krstić (MISANU), Aleksandar Lipkovski (Belgrade University), Aleksandar Vučić (Belgrade University), Siniša Vrećica (Belgrade University) and Rade Živaljević (MISANU).

The seminar provides an informal and friendly environment for disseminating mathematical ideas and introducing young mathematicians to the research in:

1. Topological, geometric, and algebraic Combinatorics;
2. Discrete, computational and algebraic Geometry;
3. Algebraic Topology, with some emphasis on applications to problems of discrete geometry and combinatorics.

Among the special contributions of the visitors and friends of the seminar, we wish to acknowledge those by Imre Bárány, Victor M. Buchstaber, Herbert Edelsbrunner, Kiyoshi Igusa, Duško Jojić, Jiří Matoušek, Sergey Melikhov, Taras Panov, Yuri P. Solovyov, Svjetlana Terzić, Victor Vassiliev, Volkmar Welker, Günter M. Ziegler, and many others.

Over the years, the seminar and the associated CGTA graduate courses covered numerous topics, including: the theory of Lie groups, algebraic curves, vector bundles and characteristic classes, dihedral and cyclic homology, theory of group actions, Bor-suk-Ulam type theorems and applications, discrete and computational geometry, automorphisms of free groups, hyperplane arrangements, stable homotopy theory, knot invariants, theory of convex polytopes and algebraic geometry (toric varieties, Newton poly-hedra), diagrams of spaces (Goresky - Mac Pherson type formulas), knot invariants, configuration spaces, invariants of three and four manifolds, toric topology and combinatorics, applied and computational algebraic topology (ACAT), etc.

The seminar emphasises the interplay of ideas from different mathematical fields, affirming the unity of mathematics and its applications. This orientation has eventually led to the creation of The Centre for Dynamical Systems, Geometry and Combinatorics, link , as a joint project with the Seminar on Mathematical Methods of Mechanics and the associated Dynamical Systems group led by Vladimir Dragović.