A radical thinker and one of the first Indian educators to disseminate Western learning and science among the young men of Bengal, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was born on 8^th April 1809 at Entally-Padmapukur in Calcutta. Born to Francis Derozio, a Christian Indo-Portuguese office worker, and Sophia Johnson Derozio, an Englishwoman, he was educated at David Drummond's Dhurramtollah Academy. Brought up with liberal education, Derozio was influenced by the English Romantic poets. He ended his school-life at the age of fourteen and entered the mercantile firm of Messrs. James Scott & Co., Calcutta, where his father for many years had worked as chief accountant. Before a year had passed, however, he left the office and joined his uncle, Mr. Arthur Johnson, as an indigo planter at Bhagalpur. It was there that he began composing verses. He came back to Calcutta in 1927, the same year the first volume of his poems was published. His patriotic verses, composed at an early age, brought him to the attention of the intellectual elite of Calcutta. His poems are regarded as an important landmark in the history of patriotic poetry in India, especially "To India - My Native Land" and The Fakeer of Jungheera.

Derozio was intimately acquainted with David Hare, to whom goes much credit of the establishment of Hindoo College, and of course, Hare School. In March 1828 (at the mere age of eighteen), Derozio was appointed Master of English Literature and History in the Senior Department of the Hindoo College. The Calcutta Review of 1852 reminisces his popularity as a teacher: “[he] acquired an undoubted influence and popularity among the students. He entered into their feelings with all the fervour enthusiasm of his highly poetic temperament and spared no pains to fan and feed the flame." Radically opposing the dogmas perpetrated in the society, Derozio stirred the students into thought against them. The Academic Association of Derozio, the first debating club, and the intellectual centre of “Young Bengal”, began under him in 1828.

Derozio is held as “the first of the great teachers who have brought English literature “home to the business and bosom” of the educated Bengali. Few teachers have exercised so profound an influence on their pupils as did Derozio; during the three years he was in Hindu College he was in a way the mentor of ‘Young Bengal’”. He was an opponent of dogmatism and believed in the Baconian principle of beginning with certainties and ending with doubts. An admirer of the ideals of the French Revolution and English radicalism, he exercised an enormous influence on his pupils, many of whom (described later on as the Young Bengal Group) were cut off from their moorings in traditional beliefs. His radicalism, and especially the magnified effect that it seemed to produce in the hearts of his pupils, however, made him unpopular in the eyes of the guardians and the orthodox Hindu stakeholders of the college. And so his paper, the Parthenon, was suppressed, and further, he was charged not only with preaching atheism and disrespect for parents but even with promoting incestuous marriage. He put up an able defence, and wrote to the authorities: “Entrusted as I was for some time with the education of youths, peculiarly circumstanced, was it for me to have made them pert and ignorant dogmatists by permitting them to know what could be said upon only one side of grave questions ? … I never teach such absurdity.” He was nevertheless dismissed and forced to resign.

Soon after his resignation, Derozio started a daily newspaper called the “East Indian.” Many eminent writers, such as Mr. Kirpatrick and Mr. Crowe, regularly contributed to this. However, by this time, Derozio’s days were numbered; he died the same year as his resignation from Hindoo College, on the 23^rd of December, 1831, at the age of twenty-three, suffering from cholera.

Derozio’s legacy was carried forward by his students, who came to be known as Derozians. In 1838, members of the Young Bengal movement established a second society called the Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge.

Bengal continues to remember Derozio, as does Presidency University. The annexe building to the Baker Laboratories was named the Derozio Building after him. His birth anniversary has been celebrated in the institution without fail; it was such an occasion that the initiative of erecting this bust was taken. The Annual Report of 1996 mentions this initiative, and the responsibility of the creation of the bust being placed on the sculptor Surajit Das. This bust, erected in his memory and unveiled on 20^th January, 1997, is located adjacent to Derozio building entrance (near N.S. Building). The inscription below the bust reads as follows: