Discovered by Hendrik van Gent in 1930, it was named after a contest winner of an exhibition at Leiden Observatory.
The asteroid was discovered on 16 September 1930, by Dutch astronomer Hendrik van Gent at the Leiden Southern Station, annex to the Johannesburg Observatory in South Africa.
[12] It was independently discovered by Soviet astronomer Evgenii Skvortsov at the Crimean Simeiz Observatory five days later.
[4][5][6] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link agrees with Petr Pravec's revised WISE-data, that is an albedo of 0.135 and a diameter of 16.21 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 11.74.
[3] This minor planet was named for Floris-Jan van der Meulen, the 5,000th visitor to a 14-day astronomical exhibition at the Leiden Observatory.