[1] Wiese Island lies at the northern end of the Kara Sea, roughly midway between Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya.

[2] In 1924, oceanographer Vladimir Wiese studied the drift of Georgy Brusilov's ill-fated Russian ship Svyataya Anna when she was trapped on the pack ice of the Kara Sea.

Wiese detected an odd deviation of the path of the ship's drift caused by certain variations of the patterns of sea and ice currents.

He deemed that the deviation was caused by the presence of an undiscovered island whose coordinates he was able to calculate with precision thanks to the availability of the successive positions of the St. Anna during its drift.

[3] Finally, the island was discovered on 13 August 1930 by a Soviet expedition led by Otto Schmidt aboard the Icebreaker Sedov under Captain Vladimir Voronin.