 Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the then British rulers of the country were coming to realize the need for establishing modern universities in India, partly in their own interests and partly as a result of the efforts of a small group of liberals within the ruling classes who genuinely wished to spread modern education among the Indian masses. In 1845, the Council of Education which then consisted of F. Millett, James Alexander, C.C.Egerton, Rassomay Dutt, Prosunno Coomar Tagore and Dr. F J.Mouat formulated a proposal for the establishment of a University of Calcutta. The University of Calcutta was to consist of a Chancellor, a Vice-Chancellor and Fellows. The Governor-General of India was to be the Chancellor and Visitor of the University.
In July 1854, the Court of Directors of the East India Company sent a 'dispatch' to the Governor General of India in Council suggesting the establishment of the Universities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. In pursuance of the dispatch, the University of Calcutta was founded on January 24,1857 by the incorporation of an Act of the Legislative Council (Act No. II of 1857). Sir James William CoIvile was appointed the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. However, it was only in 1917 that all post-graduate teaching in Calcutta was centralized under the direct and immediate control of the University itself.
The decade of the 1930's is also significant in the history of the University. Syamaprasad Mukherjee who became Vice-Chancellor in August 1934, took up the helm of the vessel which his illustrious father Ashutosh Mookerjee had launched on its historic voyage.
 The Central Library of the University was shifted from the Darbhanga Building to the newly built third floor of the Asutosh Building to accommodate the swelling number of books and readers. Within a few years the Calcutta University Press brought out a large number of books written by a galaxy distinguished authors on various branches of learning.
A very large number of distinguished names light up the pages of this glorious history. In fact, this number is so large that a complete listing of all these great teachers and researchers and distinguished alumni of the university is virtually impossible.Yet it is hard to desist from mentioning in this context the names of C.V. Raman, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Satyendranath Bose, Meghnad Saha, Sisir Kumar Mitra, Jnanchandra Ghosh, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Surendranath Dasgupta and Nihar Ranjan Roy. Rabindranath Tagore was a Visiting Professor at the University of Calcutta for some time. Among the graduates of the University appear such names as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Narendranath Datta (Swami Vivekananda), Subhas Chandra Bose and Amartya Sen.
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