The cape is the east end of a line from Cape Jeremy dividing Graham Land and Palmer Land. It was discovered in December 1940 by the United States Antarctic Service who named it for W.L.G.
Joerg, a geographer and polar specialist. At his request it was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names 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).