Rothschild Island

Rothschild Island (coord|69|36|S|72|33|W|) is an island 24 miles long, mainly ice covered but surmounted by prominent peaks of Desko Mountains, 5 miles west of the north part of Alexander Island in the north entrance to Wilkins Sound.

The island was sighted from a distance by the French Antarctic Expedition, 1908-10, and named by Charcot in honor of Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), head of the Rothschild banking family of France and president of de Rothschild Frères. In subsequent exploration by the British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE), 1934-37, the feature was believed to be a mountain connected to Alexander Island, but its insularity was reaffirmed by the United States Antarctic Service (USAS), 1939-41, who photographed and roughly mapped the island from the air. It was mapped in detail from air photos taken by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (RARE), 1947-48, by Searle of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in 1960, and from U.S. satellite imagery taken in 1974.