In the late 1800s, beriberi was studied by Takaki Kanehiro, a British-trained Japanese medical doctor of the Japanese Navy.
Takaki's success occurred ten years before Christiaan Eijkman, working in Batavia, advanced his theory that beriberi was caused by a nutritional deficiency, with his later identification of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine).
Named by the United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee (UK-APC) in 1959 after Baron Takaki Kanehiro (1849–1920), Director-General of the Medical Department of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the first man to prevent beriberi empirically by dietary additions, in 1882.