Cape Agassiz is the east tip of
Hollick-Kenyon Peninsula, a narrow ice-drowned spur extending east from the main mountain axis of the
Antarctic Peninsula
The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctic ...
between
Mobiloil Inlet and
Revelle Inlet. The cape is the east end of a line from
Cape Jeremy Cape Jeremy is a cape marking the east side of the north entrance to George VI Sound and the west end of a line dividing Graham Land and Palmer Land, Antarctica. It was discovered by the British Graham Land expedition, 1934–37, under John Rid ...
dividing
Graham Land
Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee a ...
and
Palmer Land
Palmer Land () is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica that lies south of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This application of Palmer Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the Advisory Committee on Antarctic ...
. It was discovered in December 1940 by the
United States Antarctic Service
The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ...
who named it for
W.L.G. Joerg, a geographer and polar specialist. At his request it was named by the
Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names
The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica.
History
The committee was established ...
for
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he rec ...
, an internationally famous American naturalist and geologist of Swiss origin, who first propounded the theory of continental
glaciation
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate bet ...
(Etudes sur les Glaciers, Neuchatel, 1840).
Headlands of Palmer Land
Headlands of Graham Land
Bowman Coast
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