Rothschild Island is an island 39 kilometres (24 mi) long, mainly ice covered but surmounted by prominent peaks of Desko Mountains in Antarctica, 8 kilometres (5 mi) 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, 1908-1910, 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), 1934-1937, the feature was believed to be a mountain connected to Alexander Island, but its insularity was reaffirmed by the United States Antarctic Service (USAS), 1939-1941, 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), 1947-1948, by Searle of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in 1960, and from U.S. satellite imagery taken in 1974.
