Short answers, pulled from the story.
The DSIR was founded in 1926. It was established by Ernest Marsden following calls from Ernest Rutherford for government support of education and research, and on the back of discussions at the Imperial Economic Conference held in London in October and November 1923.
Ernest Marsden founded the DSIR and served as its first director-general from 1926 to 1947. The agency was created in part due to lobbying by the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.
The DSIR was broken into ten Crown Research Institutes under the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992. Further consolidation reduced that number in subsequent years.
The five founding divisions were Grasslands in Palmerston North, Plant Diseases in Auckland, Entomology at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, Soil Survey in Taita, and Agronomy in Lincoln.
The original DSIR plans included a new agricultural college to be jointly founded by Auckland and Victoria University Colleges. Palmerston North was chosen as the site, and that institution grew to become Massey University.
The Antarctic Division, established in 1959, became Antarctica New Zealand in 1996, four years after the DSIR itself was broken up by the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992.