[2] Virtanen is a member of the Flora family, one of the largest collisional populations of stony asteroids in the main-belt.

[1] In 1928, Virtanen was first identified as 1928 DC at Heidelberg, extending the body's observation arc by 10 years prior to its official discovery at Turku.

[9][10] Additional periods were obtained from photometric observation in the R and S-band at the Palomar Transient Factory (U=2/2/2),[8][13] and from modeled data using the Lowell photometric database and other data sources, which also gave two spin axis of (307.0°, 58.0°) and (89.0°, 61.0°) in ecliptic coordinates, respectively (U=n.a.).

[4][5][6][7] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.24 – derived from 8 Flora, the largest member and namesake of its family – and calculates a diameter of 10.31 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.1.

[3] This minor planet was named for famous Finnish biochemist Artturi Virtanen (1895–1973), recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and president of the Academy of Finland for many years.