It was discovered during the Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey on 29 September 1973, by Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden, and Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory in California, United States.
The dark C-type asteroid was named for British historian of astronomy Francis Richard Stephenson.
[2] Based on the Moving Object Catalog (MOC) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the asteroid has a spectral type of a carbonaceous C-type asteroid,[5] which agrees with its classification into the Sulamitis family,[6] as well as with its low Geometric albedo measured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.
[2] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's WISE telescope, Fristephenson measures 5.327 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.057.
[4] This minor planet was named after Francis Richard Stephenson (born 1941), a British historian of astronomy at Durham University.