It was discovered by John Biscoe in 1832 and named in 1898 by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition under Adrien de Gerlache after the province of Antwerp in Belgium.There is a small science outpost called Palmer Station on the south end of Anvers island since the late 1960s; it is the smallest and farthest north of three the U.S. has on the continent.The first Palmer station was built in 1965 on the small and nearby Amsler island, and it was left standing till the 1990s.Its hut was loaned to the U.S. Government on July 2, 1963, which converted it into a biological laboratory in January 1965 for use by American scientists at the nearby Palmer Station.[4] Anvers Island was the scene of the protagonist Grim Fiddle's "kingdom" and his later imprisonment in John Calvin Batchelor's novel The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica.
Neumayer Channel shown here, separates Anvers Island from Wiencke Island and Doumer Island to the east