It was discovered on 19 January 1939, by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at Turku Observatory in Southwest Finland.
[2] The S-type asteroid orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 2.1–2.6 AU once every 3 years and 8 months (1,324 days).
[12] American astronomer Richard Binzel obtained the first rotational lightcurve of Rosseland in the early 1980s.
[10] During a survey of presumed slow rotators, photometric observations by Brazilian Cláudia Angeli and colleges gave a period of 69.2 hours and an amplitude of 0.45 magnitude (U=1).
[3] This minor planet was named in honor of renowned Norwegian astrophysicist Svein Rosseland (1894–1985), founder and first director of the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Oslo.