It was discovered on 14 April 1997, by astronomer Paul Comba at the Prescott Observatory in Arizona, United States.
The asteroid was named after German mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.
[1] This minor planet was named after German mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859), who was the successor of Carl Friedrich Gauss and the predecessor of Bernhard Riemann at the University of Göttingen.
His contributions include the first rigorous proof that the Fourier series converges.
The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 23 November 1999 (M.P.C.