Lavoisier Island

From Wikishire
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Lavoisier Island

Biscoe Islands
(British Antarctic Territory)

Location

{{{map caption}}}

Location: 66°12’15"S, 66°41’28"W
Data

Lavoisier Island is an island amongst the Biscoe Islands off the west coast of Graham Land in the British Antarctic Territory.

This island is 18 miles long and five miles wide, lying between Rabot and Watkins Islands; separated from Renaud Island and Rabot Island to the north-east by Pendleton Strait, from Watkins Island to the southwest by Lewis Sound, and from Krogh Island to the west-south-west by Vladigerov Passage.

The island was first charted by the French Antarctic Expedition, 1903–05, under Jean-Baptiste Charcot, and named "Île Nansen" after Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian Arctic explorer. However this name is also borne by Nansen Island in Wilhelmina Bay: therefore following air photography by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition in 1956-1957, the island was renamed in association with the names of pioneers of cold-climate physiology grouped in this area. It was renamed 'Lavoisier Island' after Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), the French chemist who pioneered the study of metabolism and first established the main facts about heat production in animals and man around 1780.

Winslow Rock

Winslow Rock is a rock close off the east side of Lavoisier Island. Mapped from surveys by [[Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in the 1958–59 season. There is a small penguin rookery on this rock, which provides the only known landing place on the east side of Lavoisier Island. The rock was named by Antarctic Place-Names Committee after Charles E.A. Winslow, the American physiologist who has specialized in the reactions of the human body to cold environments.

References