 It was discovered in December 1940 by the United States Antarctic Service (USAS) who named it for W.L.G.Joerg, a geographer and polar specialist.At his request it was named by the US-SCAN for Louis Agassiz, an internationally famous American naturalist and geologist of Swiss origin, who first propounded the theory of continental glaciation (Etudes sur les Glaciers, Neuchatel, 1840).